Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 09:36 AM) [snapback]85811[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
Very good, long.......but very good! Welcome along Matt, now go have a lie down!
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
Very good, long.......but very good! Welcome along Matt, now go have a lie down!
Excellent post Matt.
You mention many of the things I feel about Rossi. I never liked his gamesmanship with Biaggi and Gibernau and get frustrated with all the hangers on that see no fault in him and try to portray CS in negative ways.
Rossi ,in my opinion , is the most overrated rider of all time. He may be the best ever, but still overrated , because he always had the best of the best with Honda- bike, tyres, JB. Did anybody say he had an unfair advantage then, and yet we have had half a season of people here saying CS has had an unfair advantage. They reluctantly are starting to admit that CS is really something special- albeit through gritted teeth.
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
By the way, Cheers, mate.
You mention many of the things I feel about Rossi. I never liked his gamesmanship with Biaggi and Gibernau and get frustrated with all the hangers on that see no fault in him and try to portray CS in negative ways.
Rossi ,in my opinion , is the most overrated rider of all time. He may be the best ever, but still overrated , because he always had the best of the best with Honda- bike, tyres, JB. Did anybody say he had an unfair advantage then, and yet we have had half a season of people here saying CS has had an unfair advantage. They reluctantly are starting to admit that CS is really something special- albeit through gritted teeth.
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
By the way, Cheers, mate.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bunyip @ Aug 20 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]85820[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Excellent post Matt.
You mention many of the things I feel about Rossi. I never liked his gamesmanship with Biaggi and Gibernau and get frustrated with all the hangers on that see no fault in him and try to portray CS in negative ways.
Rossi ,in my opinion , is the most overrated rider of all time. He may be the best ever, but still overrated , because he always had the best of the best with Honda- bike, tyres, JB. Did anybody say he had an unfair advantage then, and yet we have had half a season of people here saying CS has had an unfair advantage. They reluctantly are starting to admit that CS is really something special- albeit through gritted teeth.
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
By the way, Cheers, mate.
Yep, agree with all that too!
Excellent post Matt.
You mention many of the things I feel about Rossi. I never liked his gamesmanship with Biaggi and Gibernau and get frustrated with all the hangers on that see no fault in him and try to portray CS in negative ways.
Rossi ,in my opinion , is the most overrated rider of all time. He may be the best ever, but still overrated , because he always had the best of the best with Honda- bike, tyres, JB. Did anybody say he had an unfair advantage then, and yet we have had half a season of people here saying CS has had an unfair advantage. They reluctantly are starting to admit that CS is really something special- albeit through gritted teeth.
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
By the way, Cheers, mate.
Yep, agree with all that too!
Joined Oct 2006
25K Posts | 4K+
Your Mom's House
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 01:36 AM) [snapback]85811[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
Thank God we added a mature member to the forum. The balance of Earth and the Universe is at hand.
Great read, agree with most. I would have added that Hayden exposed this "aura of invincibility."
Welcome aboard. I hope you stay on for a while. We seem to get a rapid turnover here, depending on who is winning at the moment.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bunyip @ Aug 20 2007, 02:04 AM) [snapback]85820[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
Oh, you may need to make a list larger than just Roger.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
Thank God we added a mature member to the forum. The balance of Earth and the Universe is at hand.
Great read, agree with most. I would have added that Hayden exposed this "aura of invincibility."
Welcome aboard. I hope you stay on for a while. We seem to get a rapid turnover here, depending on who is winning at the moment.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Bunyip @ Aug 20 2007, 02:04 AM) [snapback]85820[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
You know who you are. Come on down Roger.
Oh, you may need to make a list larger than just Roger.
Thanks to everyone for their kind welcomes thus far & don't worry, if I'd known that this site existed I would have been on here quite a while ago!
As I said earlier, my love of motorcycling has spanned many years & one of my best memories to date was spending a few weeks in 1996 & riding down to Sydney & Melbourne to take in what has been the one & only "speed week" in Australian history! This was where we had the Australian 500cc & WSK rounds on consecutive weekends at Eastern creek & Phillip Island respectively. What a glorious way to take in the racing...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Like many of the enthusiasts on this forum, I too yearn for close racing! Without a doubt the Catalunyan race was the one of the best in years & certainly the race of the season but it's interesting to realise that this fantastic race is seemingly where Vale's season started to unravel...
Assen not withstanding where Rossi was simply awesome, ever since Catalunya where Vale lost by the barest of margins after a real ding-dong battle with the young upstart, Vale has struggled for a variety of reasons.
Obviously not all of them are his own doing although there do appear to be more & more chinks in the once impenetrable armour of the doctor. I really do hope that closer racing ensues a bit further down the track but as a patriotic aussie I'd prefer it to be after the title has been wrapped up by Stoner! Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
As I said earlier, my love of motorcycling has spanned many years & one of my best memories to date was spending a few weeks in 1996 & riding down to Sydney & Melbourne to take in what has been the one & only "speed week" in Australian history! This was where we had the Australian 500cc & WSK rounds on consecutive weekends at Eastern creek & Phillip Island respectively. What a glorious way to take in the racing...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Like many of the enthusiasts on this forum, I too yearn for close racing! Without a doubt the Catalunyan race was the one of the best in years & certainly the race of the season but it's interesting to realise that this fantastic race is seemingly where Vale's season started to unravel...
Assen not withstanding where Rossi was simply awesome, ever since Catalunya where Vale lost by the barest of margins after a real ding-dong battle with the young upstart, Vale has struggled for a variety of reasons.
Obviously not all of them are his own doing although there do appear to be more & more chinks in the once impenetrable armour of the doctor. I really do hope that closer racing ensues a bit further down the track but as a patriotic aussie I'd prefer it to be after the title has been wrapped up by Stoner! Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 03:36 AM) [snapback]85811[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
EXCELLENT!!! welcome again matt!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 05:54 AM) [snapback]85856[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
bring on those pace makers!!!
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
EXCELLENT!!! welcome again matt!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 05:54 AM) [snapback]85856[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
bring on those pace makers!!!
Joined Oct 2006
3K Posts | 197+
Living the dream in Scotland
Welcome to the forum! A nice insightful introduction to yourself there. I wont say I agree with you 100% coz I'm a big Rossi fan, (Really? did anyone notice?) but the more folks on here with past knowledge helps put the future into perspective.
The Yams did indeed have a rep for sweet handling, but watching the 1993 season, Wayne and Luca were fighting that thing hard all the way. Everyone makes mistakes!
Anyhoo, welcome aboard!
Pete
The Yams did indeed have a rep for sweet handling, but watching the 1993 season, Wayne and Luca were fighting that thing hard all the way. Everyone makes mistakes!
Anyhoo, welcome aboard!
Pete
muzzy... Matt...Couldn’t have put it better myself!!!...and ive been following this great spost before you have, great read and an exact explanation of how it all started for you and what it was then (well from the Gardner days anyways)...Matt, I’ve been trying to educate some of the youngsters on this forum about certain aspects of “then & now”...but may be you’re effort will contribute in some way to achieving this...cheers mate...welcome aboard!!!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<div class='quotemain'>As I said earlier, my love of motorcycling has spanned many years & one of my best memories to date was spending a few weeks in 1996 & riding down to Sydney & Melbourne to take in what has been the one & only "speed week" in Australian history! This was where we had the Australian 500cc & WSK rounds on consecutive weekends at Eastern creek & Phillip Island respectively. What a glorious way to take in the racing...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Yeah muzzy I was there in the Tooheys corporate box, and I also meet Barry Sheene which was a great honour!...didn’t those Ducs sound incredible, coming down the straight!!! and I also have the Tooheys pg jacket that was given out ( ill dig it out and post a pic of it on this forum)... yeah muzzy that was a weak act what the little ..... did to our boy Mick!!!...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Yeah muzzy I was there in the Tooheys corporate box, and I also meet Barry Sheene which was a great honour!...didn’t those Ducs sound incredible, coming down the straight!!! and I also have the Tooheys pg jacket that was given out ( ill dig it out and post a pic of it on this forum)... yeah muzzy that was a weak act what the little ..... did to our boy Mick!!!...
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 08:54 PM) [snapback]85856[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Thanks to everyone for their kind welcomes thus far & don't worry, if I'd known that this site existed I would have been on here quite a while ago!
As I said earlier, my love of motorcycling has spanned many years & one of my best memories to date was spending a few weeks in 1996 & riding down to Sydney & Melbourne to take in what has been the one & only "speed week" in Australian history! This was where we had the Australian 500cc & WSK rounds on consecutive weekends at Eastern creek & Phillip Island respectively. What a glorious way to take in the racing...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Like many of the enthusiasts on this forum, I too yearn for close racing! Without a doubt the Catalunyan race was the one of the best in years & certainly the race of the season but it's interesting to realise that this fantastic race is seemingly where Vale's season started to unravel...
Assen not withstanding where Rossi was simply awesome, ever since Catalunya where Vale lost by the barest of margins after a real ding-dong battle with the young upstart, Vale has struggled for a variety of reasons.
Obviously not all of them are his own doing although there do appear to be more & more chinks in the once impenetrable armour of the doctor. I really do hope that closer racing ensues a bit further down the track but as a patriotic aussie I'd prefer it to be after the title has been wrapped up by Stoner! Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
I was at Eastern Creek that year - it was actually the first GP I've ever been too and although it was tragic seeing Criville( Doohan's shadow) take out Mick it was great to see Capirex win! It was also great when grand prix racing went back to IMO the greatest track in the world Phillip Island! Gonna be awesome to see Casey get crowned there this year.
Thanks to everyone for their kind welcomes thus far & don't worry, if I'd known that this site existed I would have been on here quite a while ago!
As I said earlier, my love of motorcycling has spanned many years & one of my best memories to date was spending a few weeks in 1996 & riding down to Sydney & Melbourne to take in what has been the one & only "speed week" in Australian history! This was where we had the Australian 500cc & WSK rounds on consecutive weekends at Eastern creek & Phillip Island respectively. What a glorious way to take in the racing...
My only complaint about the entire trip was the last lap "incident" during the 500cc race where Alex decided that he couldn't stand Mick winning again in front of his home crowd ( this is said tongue-in-cheek) and managed to take both Mick & himself out of the running! At least Mick had already won the championship by that stage & it gifted a well deserved first 500cc win to Loris riding on one of those "crappy" Marlboro Yamaha's ( again, humour)!
Like many of the enthusiasts on this forum, I too yearn for close racing! Without a doubt the Catalunyan race was the one of the best in years & certainly the race of the season but it's interesting to realise that this fantastic race is seemingly where Vale's season started to unravel...
Assen not withstanding where Rossi was simply awesome, ever since Catalunya where Vale lost by the barest of margins after a real ding-dong battle with the young upstart, Vale has struggled for a variety of reasons.
Obviously not all of them are his own doing although there do appear to be more & more chinks in the once impenetrable armour of the doctor. I really do hope that closer racing ensues a bit further down the track but as a patriotic aussie I'd prefer it to be after the title has been wrapped up by Stoner! Judging by my heart rate during the Catalunyan race I don't think that I could handle racing like that that every weekend... I'd expire from a cardiac arrest for sure
Ciao
I was at Eastern Creek that year - it was actually the first GP I've ever been too and although it was tragic seeing Criville( Doohan's shadow) take out Mick it was great to see Capirex win! It was also great when grand prix racing went back to IMO the greatest track in the world Phillip Island! Gonna be awesome to see Casey get crowned there this year.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 20 2007, 09:36 AM) [snapback]85811[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
enjoyable read, and welcome.
your are obviously very knowledgeable and i respect you opinions.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<div class='quotemain'>But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
i would love to debate this with you as i have a slightly different take on the subject but this is a casey thread not a vale thread
Hi everyone. I was going to introduce myself in the appropriate part of the forum however I thought that it might be more useful to place my first (very long) post in what has seemingly a happy hunting ground for many members of the forum. Plus I didn’t just want to stay “lurking” forever!
Now to give you a very brief background to myself, I’ve been watching the GP races since they were first starting to be televised in Australia back in 1986 due to the efforts of a certain Wayne Gardner to bring the sport into the view of the mainstream Australian public’s view. I’ve been riding both on/off road for about 35 years & have the x-rays of broken bones to prove my own mortality, as well as my sheer inabilty to ever ride in the same universe as these amazing men who road race at any level… be it MotoGP, SBK, WSS, AMA or whatever. I wouldn’t see which way even the lowliest of them went!
But as a racing enthusiast, I’d like to make comment on a number of “discussions” that have featured on this forum & in particular this thread and maybe try to put them in into a reasonable historical perspective.
For those of you that remember, back in to mid to late 80’s which is when the “Golden era” was at it’s peak, Honda & Yamaha were continually “duking” it out year in, year out to be the title holder & traditionally Yamaha always had the sweet handling but lesser power ( something to do with the Yamaha twin-crank engine design of the time I believe ) & the Honda was usually the horsepower king (a result of Honda focussing on the engine & not much else) which was often the reason for the NSR500 being a rocketship in a straight line but an absolute brute to deal with in the corners. These were simply the relative strengths & weaknesses of the bikes. Anyone here that didn’t witness these heroic events needs to just get a DVD of the races from the time & watch it… you’ll be amazed at the efforts on the parts of all the riders to get the best out of their respective equipment!
Let’s face it, by simple layman’s observation it’s plain to see that today’s four stroke 800’s with all the electronic wizardry attached are nowhere near as fearsome as the life threatening & soul destroying machines that say the 87/88/89 vintage NSR500 was for example. That thing was a widowmaker & it was incredible that Gardner, Lawson & Doohan et al managed to even keep the things rubber side down let alone win races & championships. Yes it was incredibly fast but compared to the nimble Yamaha it was as I said, a brute! Lawson soon swapped back to Yamaha in 1990 & wisely so I think.
But was it common for anyone at the time, either rider or fan alike, to repeatedly say that the rider that won each race did so only because of the machine? I recall the NSR500 of Gardner pulling a similar gap down the straights on Lawson’s 88 Yamaha as to what Caseys Duc is on Vale’s Yam this year but we all know who won the championship that year don’t we? By sheer design, the World championship is for riders, manufacturers & teams and as such there will on occasion be inequalities between them ( think Mclaren in the Senna years, Ferrari with Michael Schumacher or perhaps even Mr Agostini on his MV Augusta ). Does the fact that each of those champions were also driving the best machinery take away from their respective achievements… what do you think?
On a different note… tyres. Hmmm, fast forward to 1991 and see Mick Doohan coming into his early prime & still up against the incredibly talented “Golden era” riders but in a losing battle with tyes. Interestingly enough it was Michelin letting him down in that case too, with the difference being that the opposition was Dunlop & Michelin had simply decided to stop race development of their motorcycle tyres in 1991 so Doohan & the other Michelin riders were simply using “off-the-shelf” 1990 tyres and still trying to compete. As I recall the Michelin runners even managed to post a number of wins along the way to pushing a certain legendary Wayne Rainey all the way to the end of the title.
Now that would’ve been a bad situation with tyres wouldn’t it. But I don’t recall any of the riders making a major issue of it… no. In fact through these times it was widely acknowledged that Dunlop had a superior product but that didn’t stop other teams from winning on the Michelins on a semi regular basis… sound familiar?
And then there’s Vale himself. Another legend! I remember watching him ( I think it was 1996 ) matching Mick Doohan’s 500cc class wins with his own in the 125cc class & thinking that this wild young kid is going to go a hell of a long way & I was hooked as a Rossi supporter. I can’t remember what track but I recall him one time in his first 250 year pushing really hard at the front for the win & going a bit wide on the exit, clipped the grass & the bike spitting him off big time. Lucky for him he bounces well ( unlike myself ), dusted himself off & was back at the front come the next race. I can also remember Vale to my horror coming unstuck a number of times like this during that year. But did that make him a crasher in my eyes?… of course not!
Plus let’s look at Vale’s step up from the 250cc class into 500cc/MotoGP. Here was an extremely talented & confident young rider being guided & groomed by an outgoing 5 times world champ in Mick Doohan, who had convinced HRC ( rightly so ) that signing Rossi was an absolute must! Rossi slides into the well-oiled machine that was Mick Doohan’s team complete with JB & Co. and after a year spent sizing everything up in 2000 where we have Kenny Jnr as the unexpected champ, annihilates the opposition in 2001 with me cheering him along with every victory.
To say that at this time we had a situation where the best rider was on the best bike in the best team is an understatement of major proportions. This continued through the first 2 years of the 990’s with the efforts of Sete Gibernau occasionally unsettling the Master, but Rossi always seemed to have things covered. And how many people said that it was only because “Rossi had the best bike”… sound familiar?
Then there was the amazing move to Yamaha in 2004. There is one very important element to this move that many chose to ignore and that is of Jerry Burgess & the engineers that went with Vale to Yamaha. Does anyone out there consider that #46 may not have stood on the top step of the podium in the first race with Yamaha had this situation not been the case? In his book, Rossi even states that taking his crew with him was a very high priority. That said though Vale’s efforts in 2004 & 2005 will have to be recognised as some of the most incredible feats of riding of the current era… taking a bike that hadn’t won a championship for years by the scruff of the neck & placing it at the top for 2 consecutive years! Power to him!
But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
One of the first races of 2005 ( I think ) saw Vale & Sete in a cracker of a duel at Jerez where if all was fair & above board, Sete was arguably due the win. But Vale had other ideas & pulled a Banzai move up the inside of Sete in the final corner in order to make good his vow, bounced off the Honda putting Sete out into the gravel & proceeded to accept a win that probably wouldn’t have happened had Sete’s bike & body not been in the right position to act as berm for Vale to square off in order to make the corner at all.
Whether this was a “racing incident” has been debated by all & sundry but I personally believe that if any other rider in the field had pulled the same manoeuvre on Sete, then they would have been penalised for their efforts.
Fast forward to the present & now here we have young Casey Stoner who is bringing a different kind of attitude to the MotoGP circus. He has respect for Vale’s riding ability no doubt, but what he doesn’t share with so many other riders is that view of Vale’s aura of invincibility. Whether he has a slightly faster bike or better tyres on the day are irrelevant as this is all part & parcel of the deal with this form of racing. Vale had the opportunity to go to Ducati & race on the Bridgestone tyres but preferred to be where he is, so he made his own choices. Stoner grabbed the opportunity that he was presented with both hands & is running with it. He won’t win every race & no he isn’t a god either but be aware that he is here to stay as a contender for many a year to come, same as DP/CV/JH and the rest. This is why my allegiance now lies with Casey. I recognise that he is young & needs to reign in the odd complaints about things but he will learn these extra skills in time.
Valentino is one of the greats… end of story. Now though is the slow changing of the guard. Just as Barry Sheene handed over to Kenny Snr and so on through the likes of Spencer, Lawson, Gardner, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, Criville, Kenny Jnr etc then so must the Valentino fan base accept that one day Rossi’s grip on the top of the post will falter. It began last year with the efforts of Nicky Hayden & whether it continues this year by the hand of Stoner, Pedrosa, Vermeulen, Hopkins etc or next year, rest assured that the wheels of time will turn.
I can almost hear it now, the conversations in years to come between the next generation of fans… if a new genius rider manages to win 5+ world championships in a row, the fans of that time will then be saying that he is greater than Valentino Rossi ever was… will it be true? No… no more so than Vale is greater than Mick Doohan or greater than Wayne Rainey & so on.
As a post by another forum regular has stated… “It’s all about perspective.”
I respect anyone that has the balls to do what these guys do every other weekend, from first place to last. It’s just a case of whether they do it honourably or not that really makes the difference to me.
Hope that you enjoyed the read
Cheers, Matt
enjoyable read, and welcome.
your are obviously very knowledgeable and i respect you opinions.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<div class='quotemain'>But there was an event that happened during this time that forever soured my feeling of Valentino & that was his petulant reaction to the protest from Gibernau’s Honda team at Qatar in ‘04, where he swore that he would see to it that Sete never won another race. Now while this actually came true (shame, shame), the way that Vale saw to it made me wonder why such a great man would need to resort to such tactics. In many other cases Vale & of course many other riders have often played “mind games” but this was stepping over the line IMO.
i would love to debate this with you as i have a slightly different take on the subject but this is a casey thread not a vale thread
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(roger-m @ Aug 22 2007, 09:22 AM) [snapback]86292[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
enjoyable read, and welcome.
your are obviously very knowledgeable and i respect you opinions.
i would love to debate this with you as i have a slightly different take on the subject but this is a casey thread not a vale thread
Hi Roger…
Thanks for that & yes I’m always open to intelligent debate…
Of course people will usually view things from different perspective’s, so it’s not surprising that there is always more than one take on a situation… and naturally I only have my own gut reaction to work with in this regard.
The thing I will say about my “issue” with Vale’s overtaking manoeuvre on Sete, is that it came at a time when I was a huge Rossi fan so I know that at least it’s not an anti-Vale sentiment that’s clouding the issue…
As a long time student of human factors (both for my work & personal enjoyment) in many ways I guess that I see a parallel between Rossi in MotoGp & Schumacher in Formula 1, in that both of them are undeniable champions who have/are achieved/achieving astonishing things in their respective careers.
The hassle with this, is that in being so dominant other competitors begin to see them with this “aura” of near invincibility, which naturally the person in question can see,hear & feel themselves… and it’s only human nature to start believing that you really are unbeatable if you “get” it often enough from other people! ( This is a trap I hope that Casey doesn’t fall into)
This then mutates into being seen by some as “arrogance” or “overconfidence” on the part of the individual, which then leads to altercations such as the one Vale & Sete ended up having at Qatar & then Jerez.
Now as I said, most of this is just human nature & understandable.
The problem I had was with Vale’s “vow” to keep Sete from ever winning again and THEN following it up with that pass at Jerez. That was why I believed it to be unsportsmanlike & why it coloured my opinion of the man as much as it did.
Does that put my statement into a different light?
Cheers, M
enjoyable read, and welcome.
your are obviously very knowledgeable and i respect you opinions.
i would love to debate this with you as i have a slightly different take on the subject but this is a casey thread not a vale thread
Hi Roger…
Thanks for that & yes I’m always open to intelligent debate…
Of course people will usually view things from different perspective’s, so it’s not surprising that there is always more than one take on a situation… and naturally I only have my own gut reaction to work with in this regard.
The thing I will say about my “issue” with Vale’s overtaking manoeuvre on Sete, is that it came at a time when I was a huge Rossi fan so I know that at least it’s not an anti-Vale sentiment that’s clouding the issue…
As a long time student of human factors (both for my work & personal enjoyment) in many ways I guess that I see a parallel between Rossi in MotoGp & Schumacher in Formula 1, in that both of them are undeniable champions who have/are achieved/achieving astonishing things in their respective careers.
The hassle with this, is that in being so dominant other competitors begin to see them with this “aura” of near invincibility, which naturally the person in question can see,hear & feel themselves… and it’s only human nature to start believing that you really are unbeatable if you “get” it often enough from other people! ( This is a trap I hope that Casey doesn’t fall into)
This then mutates into being seen by some as “arrogance” or “overconfidence” on the part of the individual, which then leads to altercations such as the one Vale & Sete ended up having at Qatar & then Jerez.
Now as I said, most of this is just human nature & understandable.
The problem I had was with Vale’s “vow” to keep Sete from ever winning again and THEN following it up with that pass at Jerez. That was why I believed it to be unsportsmanlike & why it coloured my opinion of the man as much as it did.
Does that put my statement into a different light?
Cheers, M
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(muzzy57 @ Aug 22 2007, 05:10 AM) [snapback]86331[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
Hi Roger…
Thanks for that & yes I’m always open to intelligent debate…
Of course people will usually view things from different perspective’s, so it’s not surprising that there is always more than one take on a situation… and naturally I only have my own gut reaction to work with in this regard.
The thing I will say about my “issue” with Vale’s overtaking manoeuvre on Sete, is that it came at a time when I was a huge Rossi fan so I know that at least it’s not an anti-Vale sentiment that’s clouding the issue…
As a long time student of human factors (both for my work & personal enjoyment) in many ways I guess that I see a parallel between Rossi in MotoGp & Schumacher in Formula 1, in that both of them are undeniable champions who have/are achieved/achieving astonishing things in their respective careers.
The hassle with this, is that in being so dominant other competitors begin to see them with this “aura” of near invincibility, which naturally the person in question can see,hear & feel themselves… and it’s only human nature to start believing that you really are unbeatable if you “get” it often enough from other people! ( This is a trap I hope that Casey doesn’t fall into)
This then mutates into being seen by some as “arrogance” or “overconfidence” on the part of the individual, which then leads to altercations such as the one Vale & Sete ended up having at Qatar & then Jerez.
Now as I said, most of this is just human nature & understandable.
The problem I had was with Vale’s “vow” to keep Sete from ever winning again and THEN following it up with that pass at Jerez. That was why I believed it to be unsportsmanlike & why it coloured my opinion of the man as much as it did.
Does that put my statement into a different light?
Cheers, M
We share similar views, though the triggers for a cooling off of affection slightly different. The Sete moment will always be remembered as a classic and defining moment. Despite Vale's prediction and mind games, it was still a racing incident and I reckon Vale would have tried it anyway.
For me, Vale crossed the line between confidence and arrogance with the over prepared and quite frankly unfunny race win celebrations. I feel he (or his advisers) focussed more on the fairytale, and not on the hard work and dedication required of a World Champion. I feel the celebrations and mid season F1 testing showed an arrogance toward his fellow racers and Moto GP itself. I feel they thought this was the 'Rossi Show'
The truth of the matter is that he lost focus. The truth is that Nicky Hayden is now World Champion, and carrying it with pride and respect. The truth is that he was used by F1 as a huge publicity stunt. Rossi in an F1 car competitively....never in your wildest dreams! And most importantly, and like you said, he lost that aura of invincibility.
It didn't hit home with me until the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 7th title celebrations. I thought, "They've put an awful lot of effort into that!" Then I imagined what if Rossi had not won, wouldn't that lot have looked stupid (funny) trudging off back to their den! So I have a warped sense of humour, but I could start to weave this thought into my enjoyment of watching Moto GP with my mates.
Even though he lost the title, the nail was finally banged into the coffin at the beginning of this year, when Team Rossi proved their arrogance, or at least a huge lack of respect to Nicky Hayden for starters, by pulling out the 8 skittles routine. With the 8th one finally toppling over, this to me was quite obviously the left over celebration from the last round of 2006. So, I'd like to think somewhere there were 8 skittles wobbling back home! It was as if they just couldn't wait, they just had to do it. It meant absolutely nothing though, it was irrelevent!
Valentino is of course a great, great rider, but more than that he has been the great clown (and I mean that as a compliment) of Moto GP. He has been a great showman in front of the cameras, which along with his riding talent has won the hearts of millions around the world, indeed reaching worship status among most. Now things aren't so good for him the showmanship seems to have drifted away, the press are on his back for all the wrong reasons, and I now wonder if Vale heads to the starting line these days actually believing he can win!
If Valentino manages to come back and win this thing next year, then I shall truly put the man among the Gods. I reckon he's probably 'going through the mill' a bit in life at the moment, not of course in the manner that you or I might have done, but certainly compared to what he is used to, so to comeback now would be a victory over the mind as much as over his rivals. This is why I feel if they don't turn it around very soon, the tougher it will get.
Casey will start 2008 very confident
Hi Roger…
Thanks for that & yes I’m always open to intelligent debate…
Of course people will usually view things from different perspective’s, so it’s not surprising that there is always more than one take on a situation… and naturally I only have my own gut reaction to work with in this regard.
The thing I will say about my “issue” with Vale’s overtaking manoeuvre on Sete, is that it came at a time when I was a huge Rossi fan so I know that at least it’s not an anti-Vale sentiment that’s clouding the issue…
As a long time student of human factors (both for my work & personal enjoyment) in many ways I guess that I see a parallel between Rossi in MotoGp & Schumacher in Formula 1, in that both of them are undeniable champions who have/are achieved/achieving astonishing things in their respective careers.
The hassle with this, is that in being so dominant other competitors begin to see them with this “aura” of near invincibility, which naturally the person in question can see,hear & feel themselves… and it’s only human nature to start believing that you really are unbeatable if you “get” it often enough from other people! ( This is a trap I hope that Casey doesn’t fall into)
This then mutates into being seen by some as “arrogance” or “overconfidence” on the part of the individual, which then leads to altercations such as the one Vale & Sete ended up having at Qatar & then Jerez.
Now as I said, most of this is just human nature & understandable.
The problem I had was with Vale’s “vow” to keep Sete from ever winning again and THEN following it up with that pass at Jerez. That was why I believed it to be unsportsmanlike & why it coloured my opinion of the man as much as it did.
Does that put my statement into a different light?
Cheers, M
We share similar views, though the triggers for a cooling off of affection slightly different. The Sete moment will always be remembered as a classic and defining moment. Despite Vale's prediction and mind games, it was still a racing incident and I reckon Vale would have tried it anyway.
For me, Vale crossed the line between confidence and arrogance with the over prepared and quite frankly unfunny race win celebrations. I feel he (or his advisers) focussed more on the fairytale, and not on the hard work and dedication required of a World Champion. I feel the celebrations and mid season F1 testing showed an arrogance toward his fellow racers and Moto GP itself. I feel they thought this was the 'Rossi Show'
The truth of the matter is that he lost focus. The truth is that Nicky Hayden is now World Champion, and carrying it with pride and respect. The truth is that he was used by F1 as a huge publicity stunt. Rossi in an F1 car competitively....never in your wildest dreams! And most importantly, and like you said, he lost that aura of invincibility.
It didn't hit home with me until the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 7th title celebrations. I thought, "They've put an awful lot of effort into that!" Then I imagined what if Rossi had not won, wouldn't that lot have looked stupid (funny) trudging off back to their den! So I have a warped sense of humour, but I could start to weave this thought into my enjoyment of watching Moto GP with my mates.
Even though he lost the title, the nail was finally banged into the coffin at the beginning of this year, when Team Rossi proved their arrogance, or at least a huge lack of respect to Nicky Hayden for starters, by pulling out the 8 skittles routine. With the 8th one finally toppling over, this to me was quite obviously the left over celebration from the last round of 2006. So, I'd like to think somewhere there were 8 skittles wobbling back home! It was as if they just couldn't wait, they just had to do it. It meant absolutely nothing though, it was irrelevent!
Valentino is of course a great, great rider, but more than that he has been the great clown (and I mean that as a compliment) of Moto GP. He has been a great showman in front of the cameras, which along with his riding talent has won the hearts of millions around the world, indeed reaching worship status among most. Now things aren't so good for him the showmanship seems to have drifted away, the press are on his back for all the wrong reasons, and I now wonder if Vale heads to the starting line these days actually believing he can win!
If Valentino manages to come back and win this thing next year, then I shall truly put the man among the Gods. I reckon he's probably 'going through the mill' a bit in life at the moment, not of course in the manner that you or I might have done, but certainly compared to what he is used to, so to comeback now would be a victory over the mind as much as over his rivals. This is why I feel if they don't turn it around very soon, the tougher it will get.
Casey will start 2008 very confident
G'day Burky,
Thumbs up for your post as well.
Very eloquent indeed! I just hope that the Rossi supporters understand where we're coming from & that we're not just ragging out on the guy for no reason...
(These are simply explanations as to how we all arrived at this point in time, supporting the riders that we do!)
Thumbs up for your post as well.
Very eloquent indeed! I just hope that the Rossi supporters understand where we're coming from & that we're not just ragging out on the guy for no reason...
(These are simply explanations as to how we all arrived at this point in time, supporting the riders that we do!)
well muzzy57 and burky, i dont disagree with a lot of what you have said . when we make our minds up on people loke rossi gibbers biaggi ect we tent to do it withe information we see and hear on tv and the press which is probably a long way from the full story
im sorry if this is off topicand i did post it in muzzys welcome thread but have desided to put my take on the 04 quatar insident as i saw and heard it on tv at the time.
the way i understood it at the time was, vale got a bit miffed at sete for only grassing up rossi when there were others also sweeping sand off there start slot. also it was a bit of a grey area as to whether they had broken the rule but sete and his team pushed until rossi was punished. the rule said its ilegal to tamper with the start box. so is sweeping sand away classed as tampering ? not imo but sete and co pushed. rossi got pissed about it amd went and had words where sete the poofta said "it wasn't me it was my team manager" when he was seen spouting his gob off. so vale then said "ive been looking for an excuse not to talk to you "and the rest is history.
i understand people thinking vales reaction was childish or unproffesional but he was young and pissed off.
my
i lost respect for gibber before this incident, it was when he lodged a complaint against tamada at montegi (cant remember the year) because of a fair and square racing move . i felt he capitalized on katos death for his own gain, so my view on the jerez pass is probably bias.
im sorry if this is off topicand i did post it in muzzys welcome thread but have desided to put my take on the 04 quatar insident as i saw and heard it on tv at the time.
the way i understood it at the time was, vale got a bit miffed at sete for only grassing up rossi when there were others also sweeping sand off there start slot. also it was a bit of a grey area as to whether they had broken the rule but sete and his team pushed until rossi was punished. the rule said its ilegal to tamper with the start box. so is sweeping sand away classed as tampering ? not imo but sete and co pushed. rossi got pissed about it amd went and had words where sete the poofta said "it wasn't me it was my team manager" when he was seen spouting his gob off. so vale then said "ive been looking for an excuse not to talk to you "and the rest is history.
i understand people thinking vales reaction was childish or unproffesional but he was young and pissed off.
my
i lost respect for gibber before this incident, it was when he lodged a complaint against tamada at montegi (cant remember the year) because of a fair and square racing move . i felt he capitalized on katos death for his own gain, so my view on the jerez pass is probably bias.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(roger-m @ Aug 22 2007, 10:46 PM) [snapback]86358[/snapback]<div class='quotemain'>
i lost respect for gibber before this incident, it was when he lodged a complaint against tamada at montegi (cant remember the year) because of a fair and square racing move . i felt he capitalized on katos death for his own gain, so my view on the jerez pass is probably bias.
I think that what you've said about the incident is equally fair, especially when you take into consideration what you've mentioned above.
Must point out though that I was never a huge fan of Sete either & I'm certainly not trying to paddle his canoe... I was equally pissed off with Alex Criville at Eastern Creek '96 when he took Mick out 2 corners from the finish (and I was there in person too!)
Funnily enough I bumped into Alex that night after the race at the hotel where the whole HRC team was staying in Sydney & he was extremely apologetic to anyone that bothered to listen. I had a reasonably good chat to him & found him to not be the devil incarnate that I'd thought earlier in the day!
So opinions can be very succeptable to change can't they???
Cheers, M
i lost respect for gibber before this incident, it was when he lodged a complaint against tamada at montegi (cant remember the year) because of a fair and square racing move . i felt he capitalized on katos death for his own gain, so my view on the jerez pass is probably bias.
I think that what you've said about the incident is equally fair, especially when you take into consideration what you've mentioned above.
Must point out though that I was never a huge fan of Sete either & I'm certainly not trying to paddle his canoe... I was equally pissed off with Alex Criville at Eastern Creek '96 when he took Mick out 2 corners from the finish (and I was there in person too!)
Funnily enough I bumped into Alex that night after the race at the hotel where the whole HRC team was staying in Sydney & he was extremely apologetic to anyone that bothered to listen. I had a reasonably good chat to him & found him to not be the devil incarnate that I'd thought earlier in the day!
So opinions can be very succeptable to change can't they???
Cheers, M
