Joined Feb 2007
11K Posts | 2K+
Tennessee
Marquez has the mindset that he is the man now and rightfully so. He will not take backseat to anyone nor will he be intimidated by anyone. The most surprising aspect of Rossi's planned attack was that he didn't know how Marquez was going to react. If you are this supposed savant of the mind games world, how could you not know how the Alpha male is going to react when challenged.
Joined Oct 2006
25K Posts | 4K+
Your Mom's House
Perhaps because he thinks he has won those battles in the past. The thing is I don't believe Marquez is this cerebral alpha male hell bent on defiance, but rather the kid who is singularly focused on going fast while on the tarmac. I don't think he set out to avenge his honor like most believe, I just think he went out to go as fast as he could and battle for position. Rossi wasn't fast enough to keep him behind so Marc passed. No further or greater throught process here, just go fast.
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Joined Apr 2015
6K Posts | 5K+
NJ
The moment that perfectly encapsulates MM's drive was his pole lap at COTA, including the last second bike switch. All he wants to is ride on the absolute razor's edge, and has admitted that he feels most comfortable dancing on that line. That entire lap was something we never saw out of VR to the best of my recollection for his entire career.
Joined Feb 2007
11K Posts | 2K+
Tennessee
Don't kid yourself, MM and Lorenzo are desperate to dethrone the sitting King of MotoGp. Rossi is like the old lion pride Alpha male who is under attack but just doesn't have it in him to fight off the challenge any longer and has to resort to bluffs and bluster. The spoils of wearing the crown will no longer be a performance advantage as in the past, but it does have its perks. I think you have maybe misread just how cold blooded Marquez really is . To be honest, the more you hear and read about him, he reminds me a lot of a rider i came to really dislike over the years. The one huge difference is his performance is much more legitimate.
Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
Marquez a victim of vilification? No way, he's a very difficult target for that. The kid already has the most fans and Twitter followers of any other rider barring Valentino Rossi. His fan club (in Italy only!) has 4,000 members already, -- for the sake of comparison, Rossi's official fan club never exceeded 7,000 or 8,000 members.
Marquez is much more similar to Rossi than to Stoner, as a public figure -- little doubt about that.
As someone said, adult fan clubs for gp bike riders are ridiculous, and I am not sure anything can be judged by the number of members of such. If the fan club of a rider as massively popular as VR only has 7000 or 8000 members, it perhaps does demonstrate that GP bike racing hasn't quite declined to glory-hunting football/soccer fan levels.
I agree MM is different than Stoner in presumably having massive support in his home country where gp bike racing is not a minority sport which will buoy him if he needs to be buoyed, not that he is likely to be intimidated by vilification anyway as his response to the PI press conference remarks showed; I suspect he cares not a whit what Rossi or his fans think of him, but that his management or Dorna might be concerned about his future marketability.
He has been vilified to a Stoner-like level or greater on the English language forums however, and most media coverage has been pro-Rossi despite VR being the one who actually took MM out rather than the reverse. Whether this will worry him as it did Stoner is a different question as I have said, but I see the vilification as being similar, with Stoner's vilification similarly having substantially followed incidents where he was not the rider at fault, particularly at Jerez 2011 but also at Laguna Seca 2008 where his actions actually prevented a collision.
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Joined Aug 2007
11K Posts | 3K+
Pomona NY
Sure, I have already said I don't think there will be actual violence, but spitting for which there is precedent is not far off it; ask David Gilmour.
I have a thing about all this because I think it was a major part of Casey Stoner's disenchantment with the sport which deprived me of something I really enjoyed ie watching Stoner race GP bikes. I am sure MM is less sensitive and much tougher, but it will still be undeserved in his case imo as well.
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Joined Oct 2007
4K Posts | 744+
Tuscany, Italy
Fan clubs are idiotic, but give you the idea of the actual volume of the so called "hordes", i.e. organized groups wearing kind of uniforms and behaving like soccer fans. They look bigger than they are only because they make more noise and are easily identified.
In the past, fan groups were devoted to brands, not to individuals like riders. I understand brand loyalty better than rider loyalty, still I would never be a member of any fan club whatsoever.
Speaking of vilification, however, it certainly is not Stoner's privilege. How would you define what is being posted "ad nauseam" by some here regarding how bad Valentino Rossi is? Fair judgements?
Joined Oct 2008
6K Posts | 5K+
In Cider
There's a difference between criticising someone online J4rno and any or all of the following:
1. Booing a rider at a charity event
2. Spitting and throwing things at a rider (claimed by Stoner)
3. Going to a riders place of residence to hurl verbal abuse
4. Starting online petitions to get another rider to crash/hurt one
5. Attempting to infiltrate a certain riders pit garage with ill intent.
Name one poster on here who has done any one of the above? **Insert smug smiley here**
1. Booing a rider at a charity event
2. Spitting and throwing things at a rider (claimed by Stoner)
3. Going to a riders place of residence to hurl verbal abuse
4. Starting online petitions to get another rider to crash/hurt one
5. Attempting to infiltrate a certain riders pit garage with ill intent.
Name one poster on here who has done any one of the above? **Insert smug smiley here**
Fan clubs are idiotic, but give you the idea of the actual volume of the so called "hordes", i.e. organized groups wearing kind of uniforms and behaving like soccer fans. They look bigger than they are only because they make more noise and are easily identified.
In the past, fan groups were devoted to brands, not to individuals like riders. I understand brand loyalty better than rider loyalty, still I would never be a member of any fan club whatsoever.
Speaking of vilification, however, it certainly is not Stoner's privilege. How would you define what is being posted "ad nauseam" by some here regarding how bad Valentino Rossi is? Fair judgements?
I think 4 or 5 guys on this one forum when pretty well everyone everywhere else condemns MM (I don't read Spanish, which you quite possibly do), hardly equates to what Stoner experienced , which was obviously not unifactorial but still as opposed to MM was in relation to a rider who raced more fairly than most over his entire premier class career.
I am obviously not unbiased, but Povol who knows more than many do about GP bike racing is close to being fair imo, in that he gives Rossi his due as one of the greats (which is all that can be given to any rider as you yourself have more or less said), but dislikes his personality and finds him to be extremely manipulative. I have always agreed with the former but rated VR even higher, but have come to agree with Povol's opinion concerning how manipulative VR is only more recently.
And sure Stoner is not unique, he shares being widely vilified by that element among Rossi fandom with every other significant rival VR has ever had as I have said.
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Joined Apr 2008
7K Posts | 3K+
Out of Nowhere
What exactly is JL being booed for? Winning a fair championship?
And Marquez daring to race Rossi deserves being booed?
Classy.
Joined Mar 2014
75 Posts | 11+
italy
What about Lorenzo's behaviour post Sepang on the podium?
We can say Marquez was really difficult to understand at the end of the championship. But lapping over 1 sec slower and overtaking each other like it was the last three laps is weird, at least.
Last race looked like a comedy. Oh, probably you missed that Lorenzo told Sky Sport MotoGP MM and DP helped him to keep the title in Spain. That's why they didn't bother attacking him at Valencia, not even once.
Poor Dani, kept behind by the bodyguard
Now you can keep spreading your hate against the yellow puppet who ruined your favourite sport
Joined Apr 2008
7K Posts | 3K+
Out of Nowhere
Joined Apr 2015
1K Posts | 731+
neptune
Joined Jan 2011
3K Posts | 152+
The North!
Exactly my point, and thank you for proving it, which is that MM will be unfairly vilified by myriads of Rossi fans rather than subjected to violence, when Rossi is the rider who took another rider out; it would seem from what you say JL can expect this as well for the crime of winning a championship fairly.
JL in particular who was probably quite keen to win the championship himself (he obviously should have realised it was an unworthy ambition to win his 5th championship when Rossi had a chance of a 10th) did nothing except make a disapproving gesture in regard to MM being taken out. He may have disapproved of a rider being deliberately taken out per se which surely is something concerning which he is allowed to have an opinion, but VR also gained points in their championship battle by doing so.
Why didn't Rossi just ride fast enough to beat JL or MM?
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