<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (basspete @ Sep 8 2009, 06:26 PM)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Hey, it wasn't me who ran him over!!!!!
Pete
But you wish you had
As I've said before - Overpaid, over rated and until recently over here - just up the road from me in fact in Derbyshire. One of my main reservations (amongst many) about the state of Donington Park, was that Hoppers gaff was way too near
Nah, I don't mind the guy really, in spite of his notorious no show that Saturday at Misano. Lets be real, if you're gonna substitute a session on a GP bike in favour of a session on a bar stool, you don't deserve to even grace a rainy weekend club meet at a windswept Pembery. These effin' paddock primaddonna playboy posers, (I blame the Italians) Back in the day, Joey would sink a gallon and smoke a pack of twenty in Creg-Na-baa, be up before dawn spannerin' his own bikes and back on the mountain scything through the mist and smoking all his rivals for the fun of it. Hopper didn't deserve to keep his job at team snot after that episode, nor did he deserve the 5m they paid him to ride like kermit the frog all year.
Yeah every paddock needs it's pillock - its errant bad boy element. Over the years we've been hugely entertained by the likes of Luchinneli, Emmett, Kocinski, Read, Biaggi, and the ludicrous antics of one Anthony Gobert before he prodded the career self destruct mode button. (Where are you Son of D?) To this avail Hopper's certainly been the 'class clown' whether intentionally or not. He's certainly not whiter than white, (porcelain veneers aside - that reminds me...I've been meaning to re-enamel that bathtub for years), and nor is he as pure as the driven snow up Anthony Goberts snout. But he remained a popular colourful member of the GP racing fraternity, and I've been dying to see him attempt to export his Jean Phillipe Ruggia elbow decking style to a Pirelli!
I've said it on here many times before, but IMO his greatest loss was not his ride at Kawasaki, it was the delectable Diseree Grossman; that, and the stewardship of Paul Denning. He should have stayed put on the zook, but the 5m lure of team green, or more precisely, team 'greenback' was too much for him to resist.
Karma - no, to a certain extent it's true..you make your own luck in this sport, it's just that most of John's has been of the category that you'd call bad...and yeah some of that was of his own making I'm afraid. He might be a clown, but he's clearly no clown on a bike...you don't carry the recommendation of one John Ulrich fer nowt. This is another .... injury, at another .... time...still, it'll again give him time to reflect, erase the 800cc parade, and maybe remember what it means to late apex again superbike style Get well soon Hopper.
