As a world-class cynic who fled his hometown for the duration of the London Olympics, I have to admit that even I enjoyed the Games.
Team GB’s performance proved that if you invest the correct amount of time, money and brains, anything is possible. Even in Britain. Hopefully the country will learn something from the past two weeks, so that the Olympics will be remembered as something more than the icing on a rather mouldy cake.
Apart from watching Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins, I most enjoyed seeing Usain Bolt do his thing, which was rather like watching Valentino Rossi at the height of his powers. Bolt is one of those very rare athletes who manages to combine total dedication to his task with an ability to look like he’s treating the whole thing as a bit of a laugh. The way he joked with officials and fans before and after his races reminded me very much of Rossi.
Olympic sprinting legend and BBC commentator Michael Johnson realises that Bolt has something very special about him. “Usain can switch on and off,” said Johnson, marvelling at the Jamaican’s way with the fans. “I could never do that.”
Rossi’s ability to do the same – switch back and forth between race mode and joke mode – hasn’t been of much use during the past year and a half. But now we know he’s going back to Yamaha, the question arises of what kind of celebration might he be planning for his first win on the 2013 YZR-M1?
If he manages to win a race, that is. Rossi will be trying harder than ever to remind people that he’s fast and I believe that he will win races once more, but I’d be very surprised if he were to beat team-mate Jorge Lorenzo to the World Championship. Lorenzo and the Yamaha are as one, the rider’s glass-smooth riding style and the motorcycle’s friendly character perfectly matched. Even back in 2010 the Spaniard and his crew chief Ramon Forcada were getting more out of the M1 than Rossi and Jeremy Burgess. Now Lorenzo has had an extra two years with the bike, while Rossi has struggled to find his confidence with a motorcycle that has defeated him at every turn.
We will see a new Rossi next year: someone who’s fully failed for the first time in his life. It will be fascinating to witness him going back on the attack, having made a major tactical retreat.
Not that it’s a tactic that’s met with much success in premier-class GP racing. In 1983 Barry Sheene went back to Suzuki after a few years with Yamaha and never won a GP; likewise Eddie Lawson who returned to long-time employers Yamaha after winning the 1989 title with Honda. Giacomo Agostini did slightly better, returning to MV Agusta after two seasons with Yamaha and winning one more victory with MV in 1976.
When Rossi walks back into the Yamaha pit early next year the dynamics of his relationship with Lorenzo will be pretty much the exact opposite of how they were in 2008, when Lorenzo joined Rossi as understudy.
The two men have never got on, which is why Rossi left Yamaha in the first place, so their battle for supremacy within the team will be a bitter struggle. Yamaha have some experience of this kind of rivalry. In the late 1960s they had Britons Phil Read and Bill Ivy in their factory 125/250 team. In 1968 Yamaha wanted Read to be 125 champion and Ivy 250 champion, but Read defied team orders to win the double.
Just hours after wrapping up the 125 championship at Brno, he told Ivy that he wouldn’t be following team orders for the remainder of the 250 championship.
“As we lined up for the 250s, I said to Bill, ‘Okay, if you think you can beat me when we’re riding to orders, well, now you’re going have to race me for it’. He said ‘ah, f**kin’ ‘ell, Phil’. So we raced, I won and he was second.”
Ivy was mentally destroyed by Read’s double-crossing and made a desperate attempt to hang onto the 250 title by protesting that his team-mate’s number plates didn’t comply with regulations. Distraught at losing the crown, Ivy quit bikes and switched to cars. A few months later he accepted an offer to race Jawa’s 350 V4 and was fatally injured when the bike seized and hurled him to the ground at the Sachsenring in July 1969.
The Rossi/Lorenzo rivalry probably won’t get as nasty as the Read/Ivy feud, but will surely make for some thrilling grudge matches, like Catalunya 2009 and Motegi 2010. Rossi won both those encounters and already he must be stiffening his sinews for what will be his final shot at the big one. It’s a contest that will be worth watching.
Would love to see Valentino get back on top one more time… This will be the 1st time he is not the #1 driver on a team and will have to share rescources with his teammate.
Tactical retreat? Seems more an unconditional surrender to me. In light of Casey Stoner’s retirement the reuniting of the Lorenzo and Rossi show will hopefully rescue us from a dead predictable championship next season. You seem to enjoy music references Mat, remember Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”?
these last couple of years must have been tough for Rossi – he never let it show – well too much.
Love him or hate him (I am vr fan) everyone will agree that Motogp needs Rossi especially now – he’s seems to be one of those larger than life charcters.
I have to give Jorge props the man is the top of his game – I’m not sure he’ll be racing him week in and week out for wins… Jorge is to me the best right now (and that includes stoner).
I still haven’t heard whether Rossi will be able to take Burgess etc. with him back to Yamaha. I believe this to be a critical issue.
In the back of my head is the fear that MotoGP technology has moved on past Rossi. I have always felt that the dominators were dominant because their brains were particularly well suited to the technology of the time. My best example is Spencer, who did impossible things on the early radials which evolved to suit the rest of the field and left him appearing mortal. Nobody else as ever pushed the front as a riding method before or since. 250 and 500 titles in one season! Then NOTHING?
I hope I am wrong but Rossi’s time may be past.
Definitely a complete surrender for me. Even if he’ll manage to win next year it’ll be something missing there. I don’t see friendly Rossi-Yamaha combo anymore even he will win. Neither celebration nor joke will be funny. He’s now a surrender connected additionally with complicated status for Spies/Dovizioso/Crutchlow and can rebuild his status quo only with another brand bike, even on Honda but now he’s just a complete surrender.
So if Rossi wins again, even another championship, it’s still a “been there, done that” feat. Seems to me a lose/lose proposition, win and it’s “well of course, he’s back on the bike he left for Ducati” while lose and it’s “he washed up and can’t win on anything”. Sad that the guy who used to thrive on challenges gave up so easily. I’ll be cheering for WHOEVER is riding the bikes for Borgo Panigale, the bikes that #46 decided he couldn’t improve enough to win on. Sad way to wind up what WAS an amazing career.
And to think. If Ducati had accepted the obvious and pulled that front cylinder bank up 20 degrees and sat the front engine mounts down there instead, what might have been…….
Some interesting comments posted here….
Larry T for example…..”Sad that the guy who used to thrive on challenges gave up so easily…..”
Well Larry, just how do you think you would feel if every weekend you were thrown on to the tarmac/bitumen at 90 mph???
If you have read somne of Mat Oxley’s prevois articles on this situation you would understand that the Ducati is a seriously flawed motorcycle and unless Ducati….err, sorry, Audi, design a new motor & chassis comination, then the Duke is not going to win another MotoGP race.
I would think that Vale has been told that this is not going to happen and therefore he has decided that he cannot turn a pigs ear into a silk purse (for ggodness sake, surely if JB cannot sort the bike then there are major issues to be faced)…..VR does not need the hassle nor ignominy of ending his career on a dofg of a bike.
To me, it makes sense – return to Yamaha, win some more races and retire with hios reputation intact.
Too easy for armchair racers to whine about him copping out…..
Casey Stoner’s comments take some beating. I guess he feels more than slightly aggrieved at Rossi’s not so veiled comments about Ducati cheating during Casey’s championship year with them. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-sport/stoner-launches-motogp-attack-on-rossi-20120815-248bz.html
Rossi’s 33, with maybe 2 years left in MotoGP. He wants to enjoy it. Trundling around in 8th place and getting spat off at every corner doesn’t sound like fun to me. He tried it with Ducati, it didn’t work out (a good title for his sequel bio perhaps…?).
It’s amazing since 2010 how many people have written Rossi off. It’s always written that Lorenzo defeated Rossi in VR’s last season with Yamaha. Factually he did but the small matter of a broken leg and one shoulder hanging together by a thread seem to get overlooked. Who was leading the championship before VR broke his leg…?
I think Lorenzo is now the complete package, the best out there but fair play to Rossi for having the belief to go back there and feel he can challenge. I think race wins are the best VR can hope for but he’s a racer and he just wants to have a chance to compete.
The Ducati was and is a dog. Maybe a younger Rossi could have (dare I say it) tried a bit harder. There’s a good comment above about perhaps the technology has moved on beyond Rossi (and Burgess). During the last year at Yamaha, it was interesting that VR & JB were using Lorenzo’s settings on what was supposed to be Rossi’s bike.
For MotoGP however, it has to be a good thing for Rossi to be back on a competitive bike because let’s face it, he’ll be at the sharp end. I don’t see another championship but race wins certainly.
As for Stoner, that guy has some issues he really needs to sort out. I can’t take anything he says about anything seriously. He’s such a well balanced guy – he has a chip on each shoulder…
Yes, what’s with Stoner??? Highly disrespectful article full of seemingly direct quotes. Unprofessional to say the least and lets hope that VR proves all the nay sayers wrong and takes the fight to Lorenzo…..I think there will be some very interesting mind games in the Yamaha pit next year.
And as for Stoner….well he’s walking away isn’t he? – therefore history/yesterday’s man. If all he can do is bad mouth a guy with VR’s talent and WCD record then he will not be missed……
He should stick around for another year and see how many of his words he will have to eat…..For an amazing rider he sure sounds like a whiner……
Casey reminds me of the kid that puts the v up at up sneakily out of his mums car window as she drives away and always had. There isn’t a worse advert for the sport. He’ll think about Rossi a lot more than vice versa even though a Vee patriotic Rossi will be gutted at how bad Ducati are, and will be reminded every year on his daughters birthday. The dukes plain bad and if casey had anything about him he’d go back and put his talent where his mouth is, he won’t and most of us know why. He left Ducati for the exact same reasons but still believes he had a2007 every season. Needs to worry about being so far off on the mighty Honda, Rossi would have won the title already given the bike and caseys age….
I’m not sure I get the anti-Stoner comments. He is the only guy who tamed the Ducati over the last many years. Rossi didn’t. I do believe Loris Capirossi got a win on it, but otherwise it’s been Stoner. Casey whipped tail on the Honder last year as well. So it’s not just the bike with Casey.
Folks upset at Stoner’s comments might want to remember all the mind games and otherwise that Rossi played against Biaggi and especially Gibernau. Rossi is no angel, nor is he the greatest ever. One of the greats, but not the greatest, by any means. I’d put Hailwood, Ago, and Doohan up on that pedestal first. But that’s not to take away from what Rossi has done, I just find that he’s not what some in the media have portrayed him to be (with a lot of help from Rossi, no doubt).
When you start name-calling Stoner you’re doing worst than what you’re accusing him of. Reading his statements about Rossi’s time at Ducati I didn’t hear him calling Rossi names. The things he mentioned are all on the record and are factual. I’m not saying anybody has to like him but what’s the point of slagging him off?
Some good comments here! Dealing with a few of the points raised… Rossi’s switch to Yamaha isn’t unconditional surrender. That would be retirement. Yes, Rossi probably is past his peak, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be throwing everything at it next year to prove us wrong. I think the thing that Rossi wants more than anything in his final two years in MotoGP is to have some fun – racing at the front and enjoying himself, not struggling and getting thrown down the road every weekend. Stoner’s about Rossi’s failure are a bit salty but spot on. VR and the Ducati really have made no progress since he started there last year. Still a second to 1.5 seconds off the front. I’d still put Stoner ahead of Lorenzo on talent. That Honda is a pig this year, while the Yamaha is as sweet as can be. JB told me last year that Rossi’s status is secure. Many years ahead we will remember him for his successes, not his failures, just like we remember Ali for his wins, not his defeats. It’s a shame the Ducati thing didn’t work out, but it will be good to see Rossi up front and (hopefully) giving it his all again
…I have been very excited ever since I first read about Rossi returning to Yamaha. I sense that Rossi has come to grips with certain issues between him and Lorenzo and will be concentrating on trying to forget his nightmare at Ducati. By choosing Yamaha, he is returning to a bike that he previously had great front end feel from and compared to the issues he’s had to deal with while developing the Duc, it should be much easier to sort out…besides staying upright. At this time Yamaha has the bike pretty well developed and far removed from the original developement program Vale entered into the first time around with Yamaha. I’m hoping this will put Valentino on competetive footing right from the start of the season…after all, with his talents and pedigree, he’s got probably 2 or 3 more world championships left in him !
Rossi always maintained that he preferred the 2 strokes, so give him his due that he is actually riding an entire class of bikes (4 strokes) that he would rather not. On the other hand those that like to bag Stoner for saying what was on his mind should remember that Rossi was not backward in coming forward with his opinion, of Stoner and anybody else. Lets not forget Jeremy (I’ll fix the Ducati in 80 seconds) Burgess. As an Australian Burgess should remember the old Australian adage “put up or shut up”.
Speaking entirely for myself I would like Stoner to stick around a little longer, not just because he is entertaining to watch (as are most of the riders at that level) but I also believe he should pay his dues, win a few more races or championships and silence the naysayers. Rossi has a huge PR juggernaut which can only be halted by results, not words. Stoner has to come to grips with this.
No one has yet mentioned that Stoner steers with the rear wheel, Rossi does not. There are some bikes which require a rethink on attitude and style. Ducati is I believe such a bike. Not a dog, just different.
Perhaps Rossi and Burgess have had their day, perhaps not. 2013 is still some way off. Those that accuse Stoner of moaning might like to know that Ducati now regard Rossi as a moaner, and I saw an interview with Burgess where he admitted they were using Hayden’s data. This to me is an admission that Rossi has not pushed himself. Then again I think his entire attitude has changed since his broken leg and Simoncelli’s death.
Is it not time for Mr Rossi to put up his hand and admit it was at his request that Ducati made huge changes to the bike Casey Stoner won races on (and set race records that still stand) then proceeded to march it backwards down the grid?
Living in Italy, the expectation of instant success on all it’s sportsmen becomes all too clear. Alonso’s “failure” in 2010 led to comments that he was “all talk”. Compared to Moto GP, F1 carries little weight so you can imagine the mood now. Rossi on a Ducati was the dream come true but what a nightmare it turned out to be. I hope Rossi is back on form next year just to show Ducati that truck racing is not a two wheel sport (according to my friends, the disaster is all down to the inflexibility of both Ducati’s management and it’s bike!).
Bring it on! Shame about Vale’s lack of suck-cess with Ducati, but really MotoGP now looks a bit pale without too many proper brands. My last visit to Estoril was OK but nothing like 2005 or even 2010, the magic is at 50% level, in some ways due to Rossi’s disappointing run of form lately. A mighty battle in 2013 might save the day. I’m more intrigued about Dovizioso/Ducati thing, what if he arrives there and blows everyone away next year, now THAT will make Rossi look even worse!
You can bet your last penny that Rossi and Lorenzo will BOTH be fitter and stronger than ever before come the 2013 season; neither will want to lose to the other. I foresee one or two ‘paint-swapping’ moments occurring next year. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Rossi of old (a la Gibernau days) may reappear… I bl**dy hope so! Ding ding, round 1…!!
Look Rossi is past his best, but his best was brilliant. So lets see whats left. All riders play mind games and I’d rather see a vicious rivalry than everyone being pals in the paddock. you can see it in the way they ‘race’, the repetitive procession we mostly see week in and week out. Noone wants to pull the hard move. Stoner, aggressive talent, but mentally weak. Comparisons to Doohan?? Doohan wouldnt be sitting at home “concentrating on healing”.
Ducati is not the problem?
Then how was it that 2 riders in 2010, that did not start multiple races, finish ahead of a brilliant Stoner and a GP winning Ducati?