CONTENTS

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First of all, if Valentino Rossi really is the greatest bike racing legend of all time, who has he overcome? What is the shortlist of legends? There are eleven of them, named here in alphabetical order, just to avoid argument: Giacomo Agostini, Mick Doohan, Geoff Duke, Mike Hailwood, Eddie Lawson, Phil Read, Wayne Rainey, Kenny Roberts, Rossi, Freddie Spencer and John Surtees.

These are the greatest of the great, the men who have written motorcycle racing history with their magical riding talent, their iron will and (sometimes, but not always) their sparkling charisma.

The component parts of a racing legend are many. You need eyesight, reflexes and high-speed mental capacity way beyond the norm, an awesome inner aggression over which you have total control, a willingness to take risks with your own life and with the lives of others, a natural ability to control machinery and to see through technical problems, a determination to never give up, even when that fractured collarbone grates every time you hit the brakes, and an ability to cheer up the dreary, workaday lives of millions of people across the globe.

Rossi has all these things in abundance. Yet it is probably that final quality that really sets him apart from the others. He may have won more premier-class races than anyone, but if you could organise a champion of champions’ race, with all ten riders at the peak of their talent, riding identical machinery, it’s difficult to imagine who might win. (In my dreams it would be Hailwood, Roberts and Rossi slugging it out.) But there is little doubt who has the biggest hold over people’s hearts.

So how did that happen? To answer such a question, you need to return to a person’s childhood, meet their parents and friends, see where they grew up and investigate their upbringing. Which in this case means travelling to the little hillside town of Tavullia in Italy’s Marche region, where Rossi was raised.

His father Graziano lives just outside the town, his mother Stefania in the middle. Mum was the daughter of a bike-mad truckie. Dad was a seriously talented bike racer, who might have

climbed much greater heights if he hadn’t suffered injuries and ill luck. As it was, he won three 250 GPs in 1979, the year Valentino was born, and had factory 500 rides with Morbidelli, Suzuki and Yamaha. Without doubt, Graziano has been the biggest influence on his son’s life, both by nature and by nurture.

Rossi obviously has his father’s go-faster genes and it was Graziano who turned the Tavullia tearaway into a racer, first in karts (because he decided bikes were too dangerous for his son) and then on minimotos. Of course, that’s not unusual. Hailwood’s dad raced, as did Casey Stoner’s. So what’s so special in this case?

Graziano was an unusual bike racer: teacher by trade, hippy by inclination and a bit of an intellectual. He wanted his son to race, but his attitude was perhaps was more free-rolling than other racers’ dads. Above all he wanted Valentino to have fun; there was no pressure to win. And crucially he never tried to force his opinions on his son.

“Valentino was instinctive from the start. I was surprised by how little I had to explain, but I think kids have more ability than we ever imagine,” he says. “I never had the chance to teach him anything. I quickly understood that he didn’t want to hear my suggestions. In general, parents can’t teach their kids anything through words, it’s from the way they behave that kids pick up things.”

EARLY YEARS

Crucially, Graziano never tried to force his opinions on his son. He wanted Vale to have fun

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ROSSI THE RACER

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JERRY BURGESS

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ROSSI ON SPEED

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But for me, what exactly is speed?It’s something very, very fascinating. At high

speed everything becomes more difficult and more beautiful. The faster you go, the more excited you become. If, for example, you race on a legendary track like Assen, in Holland, but at 100km/h (60mph – Ed), everything is easy and boring. On the other hand, if you start racing at 300km/h (180mph), the semi-bends become bends, the little holes become big holes, everything becomes extreme and bigger. And then it becomes beautiful.

The perception of speed depends, above all, from where you are experiencing it, more than on what vehicle you are using. In general, on a motorbike you can feel it more. But if you go at 300km/h on a bike on a racetrack, or at 240km/h in a car on a motorway, undoubtedly you will think you are going faster in the car, even if you are cocooned from the wind. The reason? If the road is narrower, the reference points are nearer and the sensation of speed will be amplified.

But between going fast in a car and a motorbike there are great differences: you have to take into consideration that the higher the speed on a motorbike, the more physical it gets for the rider. It isn’t any more just a question of controlling the vehicle: the problem, at 300km/h, is the vital one of staying in the saddle. And also, at that speed, moving on the bike becomes complicated. Whilst you are crouched and protected by the fairing, you don’t quite know how fast you are going. But when you raise yourself a little, before a bend, the whack from the wind is violent.

Since race bikes do not have a speedometer, the only reference to your speed you have is the suspension. For example, at Assen, there’s a straight which on a scooter would feel completely flat, but at 290km/h on a Grand Prix bike you bounce frighteningly all over the place, because the undulations at that speed become real bumps. The suspension completely compresses and you can hear the fairing scraping violently on the Tarmac. You get knocked about badly and from that you understand what speed you are doing.

It’s therefore important to do everything calmly. Even if it is a paradox, this is the truth: the faster you go the slower your movements must be in the saddle, because speed takes everything to the extreme and it automatically does all the work. This is one of the most fascinating aspects: when you race and go beyond a certain speed, you have the sensation of being faster than anything else around you. You are faster than reality. In a race, however, everything is more or less planned. This is because a rider knows where he has to go during a race, and therefore he doesn’t even feel the straight at Mugello, since he is thinking about the coming bend. He doesn’t even think that it takes six seconds to do a kilometre. You probably would be surprised by that speed. You don’t expect it and you don’t know where it’s going to take you. It’s the usual theme of the fear of the unknown.

On the racetrack I am aware of going at 330km/h, and am also aware of the type of bend that is waiting for me at the end of the straight. If I didn’t know, such as if I was let loose like a cretin on a motorway at 330km/h, the sensation would be different, because the unknown would scare me.

Personally, the one occasion when I felt and ‘suffered’ speed acutely was when I tried the four-stroke MotoGP bike for the second time. I was in Australia, at Phillip Island, where the straight allows you to reach a monstrous speed. If on the old 500 two-strokes we reached 305km/h, with the new RC211V I immediately hit 320km/h. At that speed 5km/h is an enormous difference. Since Phillip Island’s straight has a rise and the final part is downhill, the first couple of times I reached the rise my feet left the pegs because at that moment, when I sat up to brake, the air current would hit me directly on the chest and rush over the tank beneath my bum, flinging me into the air. It happened for two or three laps and the sensation of jumping off the bike was incredible. You learn the most important thing very quickly: the higher the speed the gentler, lighter, more planned your movements in the saddle must be. At that point everything becomes normal. Move slowly, read the track quickly.

SPEED; too fast, too furious; fast food; fast forward; speedboat; fast lane; faster; fast bikes; full throttle; flat-out; survival of the fastest; I live for speed; fast track. Flicking through the papers these days in London, I notice speed is everywhere. On billboards, adverts, sung by pop groups, shouted from book covers, used to sell hamburgers.

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ROSSI’S WINS

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ROSSI’S GRAPHICS

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