CN
III IN THE PADDOCK
P140
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
I
t was the contemporary racing
sage Jeremy Burgess who
was so insistent. Dani Pedrosa
would never make it on a Mo-
toGP bike—back when he moved
up from 250 domination 10 years
ago—because he was too puny.
I think "monkey on a greyhound"
might have been the expression
used.
Pedrosa is still puny: official
figures are 112 pounds and 5'2".
And though he does always tend
to be the bridesmaid, nobody
could say he hasn't made it.
Twenty-six wins and six top-three
title finishes in nine years is a
show of strength in anybody's
language.
At what price? A bad, indeed
possibly terminal, case of racers'
wrist.
Pedrosa's public announce-
ment after another disappointing
opening Grand Prix at Qatar ex-
plained his erratic 2014 season.
He'd been strong enough to give
Marquez a very hard time at the
Catalan Grand Prix last year after
yet another surgical intervention
for arm pump. As the year wore
on, however, the malady re-
turned, while Pedrosa even lost
his knack of fast starting and his
results tailed off.
The surgery had been a
DANI AND THE POPEYE EFFECT
