Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/804174
VOL. 54 ISSUE 12 MARCH 28, 2017 P139 greatest of ego-trips; fellow- feeling towards one's rivals tends to lean more towards seriously vengeful than brotherly sup- port. (Even, to some extent, when it actually is your brother.) These are not weekend warriors at some club event vying for a minuscule silver cup made of plastic and bragging rights in the circuit bar. These are the world championships. There is, of course, some- thing resembling empathy when another rider gets badly injured or worse. But I believe that is still motivated by self-interested, as a reminder of what could happen to them. Perhaps "family" is appropri- ate, given that in some cases families are rife with sibling rivalry of astonishing propor- tions. We've all come across it, but here are some classical precedents. Look at the ancient Romans. The Emperor Nero, famous for fiddling while Rome burnt, also distinguished himself by kick- ing his pregnant wife to death. (Another of that ilk smothered his dinner guests with rose pet- als, according to historian Mary Beard.) Caligula took the biscuit. Beard believes the movie scene where he ripped the fetus of his own baby from his sister's womb and ate it was entirely made up by an over-imaginative script writer. More telling, and more appo- site to those eyeing one another up on the GP grid, was his habit of chuckling to himself in avun- cular fashion, then saying to his family and fellow guests with a grin: "I've just realized I could click my fingers and have all your heads cut off." Not that different from the atmosphere one can imagine in the Yamaha hospitality unit, should there ever have been an occasion that Rossi and Lorenzo ever broke bread together. In fact, they avoided one another, in time-honored fashion. Riders are sometimes friends before they get serious, and sometimes do become friends after they've retired. In between, however, not so much. Families, eh. They have their weird elements. And so it is with the MotoGP family. Not least because, in the nature of things, loyalties tend to shift from one year to the next, as riders and/or their mechan- ics change teams or classes. One season's bosom buddy can become the next year's hated enemy. Among riders, just going a bit too fast can turn a relationship on its head. Going back a bit, I recall Marco Melandri looking wistful as he told me how he and Rossi had been such good pals. After joint motocross training, "we'd hang our wet socks together on the radiator." Until Melandri arrived in MotoGP and became a serious threat. No more sock- hanging after that. Earlier than that, both Kevin Schwantz and Wayne Rainey have spoken about how, espe- cially in their earlier U.S. super- bike days, they would willingly have forced the other off the track at top speed without a sec- ond thought to potentially fatal consequences. Barry Sheene radiated hostil- ity to his rivals, albeit couched in the same sort of media-friendly charm nowadays employed to such good effect by Rossi. When American rider Pat Hen- nen was recruited to Suzuki's factory team, Sheene's com- ment, in writing, was: "Well, if you pay peanuts, you get a monkey." And more up to date, we have much-vaunted simmering ten- sion between Maverick Vinales and Marc Marquez, which goes all the way back to before their teenage years. I love motorbike racing. I think we all do, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. I also really admire top rid- ers. But it's not for their role in any imaginary MotoGP family. Nor for their charm or personal- ity. Nor their brotherly love. It's because they're really good at riding motorbikes really fast. And that's enough for me. CN