Cycle News

P130 ing in a room to have our picture taken—all the Camel Challenge guys. Wayne's at one end of the line, and I'm at the other end of the line, and we're both inten- tionally not staring straight ahead but both looking away in different directions and not caring what we were doing there. We hated each other. "I read somewhere where Wayne once said that if he could have done something to get rid of me back then, he would have done it, because he felt like I'd had everything just handed to me and that I didn't earn it. Well, I did get some lucky breaks, but I feel like I made the most of 'em. It wasn't like I was floundering around for three years and then all of a sudden, I was making it. "It was just as bad when I got to do a few GPs in '86 and '87. Then, in '88, I won Daytona and went straight to Suzuka [Grand Prix]. It rained all week there and then on Sunday it stopped but the track was still wet. Well, I had just tested there three weeks before Daytona, and we had a wet setup that we knew, and we just threw it at the bike, and we ran away with the race. Then I won the fifth round in Germany, and Wayne told me later that after that happened, he couldn't sleep at night, wonder- ing how I'd won two GPs when he hadn't even won his first one yet. It really ate on him. "But when he won Doning- ton, which was about round 10, that's when it sort of changed. We started acknowledging each other when we'd walk past each other in the pits. I think at that point we both had factories that we had good relationships with and strong ties with, and I think we just finally realized that there was enough room for both of us. And we started to respect each other. "Then, in '89, I won a bunch of races, but Wayne was always the guy who was the champion- ship contender. You could tell that he was the more mature, more experienced racer. He was the smarter guy, and that was his way of going about things, and all of his fans realized that. I think all of my fans realized that I was the guy who was young and inexperienced and just wanted to win races. "I have no doubt that Wayne Rainey is the single most mo- tivated, hardest-working sum bitch I have ever seen. He made those Yamahas that he rode everything that they were, abso- lutely, every year. There's that story that goes around where Kenny Sr. told him, 'If you keep winning like this, we'll never get anything better.' "It's funny now. We talk about it all and just laugh. Probably the most fun we've ever had debating our careers was when Wayne released his book at Donington. I was there, and Law- son, Mamola, Kenny [Roberts] Sr., Dean Miller, all the guys who used to drive the motorhomes and stuff. We all met at the bar one night and started drinkin.' We must have drank beer for six hours and told stories like, 'Ah, you sumbitch, when you hit me that one time, why I shoulda...' Then Lawson would tell a story, and Mamola would tell a story. If somebody would have video- taped that, it would be worth millions. "I could do a book that could tell some stories that would be pretty entertaining, but maybe that's something that Wayne and I should work into over the next few years. Wayne has already taken the family-man approach, and I'm going to start settling down one of these days. Maybe we could sit down and tell some stories and have someone take notes. That thing would sell, but it would take both of us together to do it right. It would be a fun project, for sure." If such a book should ever be published, just know that the line forms to the left... CN This Archives edition is re- printed from issue #23, June 15, 2005. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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