No, is the simple answer to the question in the headline. Not by a long way, because motorcycle racing is a cruel, vicious sport, which doesn’t spare even its greatest talents.
Martín’s journey from winning the 2024 MotoGP crown was downhill all the way: broken right hand during pre-season testing, a broken left hand while training for his return, a collapsed lung and 11 broken ribs during his comeback race in Qatar and a broken collarbone at the first corner of September’s Japanese grand prix.
Not many other sports do that kind of thing to their athletes.
The 27-year-old Spaniard ended the season 21st overall, on 34 points, out of a possible 814 and 511 fewer than champion Marc Márquez.
As if to underline the fact that no one gets out of motorcycle racing without suffering, the other three worst MotoGP title defences belong to three all-time greats: Márquez, Freddie Spencer and Mick Doohan.
Márquez didn’t score a single point in 2020, after breaking his right arm in the season-opening Spanish Grand Prix and then making a bad situation much worse by attempting to race in the following weekend’s Andalusian GP after having the broken humerus bone plated back together. The arm required two further surgeries that year and he didn’t return to racing until round three of the 2021 championship.
Spencer also scored zero points in 1986, after arguably the greatest world championship season of all time – in 1985 he won both the 500cc and 250cc world championships, a unique feat of superhuman strength. He won his final GP at the penultimate race of 1985 and never even stood on a podium again.
The American’s fall from the highest heights to the darkest depths has been a mystery ever since, but he does know why it happened.
The nightmare began at the opening GP of 1986 – at Jarama, Spain – when he was leading by miles when his right hand locked up.
“I tried to squeeze the brake and the fingers wouldn’t move,” he remembers. “I tried one more lap and pulled into the pits. That afternoon a journalist actually asked me if I’d come in because I wanted more money. I was devastated by that.”
Spencer won the 1985 MotoGP title aboard Honda’s second NSR500 but a crash during that year’s Spanish GP was the root of his downfall
Honda
For the next few years Spencer visited specialists, underwent surgery, tried all manner of cures and made one sad comeback after another.
The origin of his woes went back to May 1985, when he crashed in the morning warm-up at Jarama. That tumble broke his right hand, which suffered further damage in another crash at Silverstone that August. Neither of these injuries prevented him from winning the unique double crown but nine months later the hand was useless.
“The nerves had become so inflamed with all the damage and adhesions.”
The effort of simultaneously tackling bike racing’s two biggest championships had also taken its toll. On race days Spencer would climb off the 250 and go straight out on the 500 – two GPs back to back. Testing was even worse.
“I was doing 200 laps a day, for six or seven days, testing 300 different tyres and trying to develop two bikes [Honda‘s NSR250 and NSR500 had both been designed uniquely for him].”
Nowadays, no manufacturer would throw half as much weight on one rider’s shoulders.
“At the end of ’85 I could not believe how exhausted I was, mentally and physically.”
In 1987, surgeons diagnosed carpal-tunnel syndrome and operated to alleviate the symptoms. Spencer believed it was all systems go again.
“I just wanted the problem to be over. I trained all winter, they did the surgery and I started testing for 1988. But within a couple of days the arm was collapsing, so I retired.”
His remarkable career seemed over, then his surgeons had another eureka moment; or so they thought.
“At the end of ’88 they removed four bone chips from my neck.”
By this time, he had lost his factory Honda ride but managed to slide into the Marlboro Yamaha berth vacated by Eddie Lawson, who had moved to Honda for 1989.
“But as soon as I started racing, week in, week out, the problem started again. The bone stuff had been fixed but the nerve damage was still there.”
Marlboro Yamaha team owner Giacomo Agostini sacked him halfway through 1989.
Spencer now believes that the true cause of his troubles goes way back to his earliest days on bikes.
“I wore out my body riding every day from the age of three or four, for hours and hours and hours.”
In other words, it was the process of becoming a genius that ultimately destroyed his genius.
Doohan rode a few demo laps during the 1999 Australian GP, a few weeks before announcing his retirement
Getty Images
Doohan’s 1999 title defence has echoes of Márquez’s disastrous 2020 season, if only because their accidents happened within a few metres of each other at Jerez and ended what had been a glorious run of title successes: Márquez was going for his fifth consecutive title, Doohan for his sixth in a row.
Doohan crashed 100 metres later than Márquez, when he touched a damp white line between Turns 3 and 4 during Friday practice for the Spanish GP. He went flying through the gravel trap and into a trackside barrier. His injuries were horrendous: broken left wrist, broken right collarbone, broken right leg, broken left foot, broken right hand, two broken ribs. His left arm had also suffered nerve damage and remained paralysed for months.
“I was fairly beat up,” he recalls with typical Aussie understatement. “I was still black and blue a month later. The swelling was unbelievable.”
Doohan hoped to return to racing at August’s Czech GP, 15 weeks after the crash.
“The sport missed him,” I wrote in my Doohan biography published at that time. “For some months it was difficult to take the racing seriously, like watching second best.”
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I feel much the same today when Márquez isn’t out there, forcing the pace, going places that others either fear to go, or don’t even think about going, and generally making everyone else sweat.
Doohan underwent numerous surgeries throughout 1999, determined to race again.
“I don’t want to be the guy who leaves racing in the back of an ambulance,” he said.
“Nah, he’s waiting for the hearse,” responded one hard-bitten journalist.
He ended the season 17th overall, four places better than Martín in 2025.
Finally, on 10th December 1999, Doohan announced that he had admitted defeat and was retiring with immediate effect. Quite simply, his body was too broken to race motorcycles.
“It was time to realise there’s no point in flogging a dead horse,” he said.
