I equally dislike Rossi yet you rarely hear me "whine" about him.
I enjoy going after boners because they use their blind fanaticism to combat blind fanaticism. They fail to see the irony.
They claim to be purists yet seem to be oblivious that the greatest rider we have ever seen, lines up to race every Sunday
You honestly don't get it when it comes to Stoner.
You call him a quitter and everything else under the sun.
Yet you have never really understood why he left. He retired of his own free will. My personal feelings on this are absolutely irrelevant. Do I agree with his decision to retire at 27 years old? Nope. But it's not my life, and I can't profess to know the sort of pressure he was under at that level. Nor can I profess to know how much he grew tired of the whole ........ circus.
Casey lived a life that you and I have no idea about. We only know what is said in interviews. He first raced when he was 4 years old in 1989. He won his first motorcycle race when he was 6 years old in 1991. At the time of his retirement, he spent nearly a quarter of a century racing. You may think, so what? Big deal, so do how many other guys who are still racing. For a guy who only ever wanted to go racing from the time he was a kid, getting to the top isn't always what it is cracked up to be. Racing is only a small fraction of the job when you are at the highest level. If you're a guy who only wants to race, how much fun do you think press conferences, sponsor obligations, hostile fans, a hostile media, and a hostile administrator of the sport would be? I can bet you any amount of money, that had he received the sort of fawning adulation and soft coverage that Valentino Rossi receives, he'd still be racing. Instead, he went to work every day, treated like .... by the public, treated like .... by the sport's administrators, used to create ........ stories favoring VR, and so on. How much fun do you really think that would be? But then this is where you say, "He's getting paid and he should have known!" Money is great, but do you think that somehow makes it okay to be spit on? Or to have everything you do twisted into something else to drive a false narrative? How about having all of your accomplishments belittled by the world at large? It was the bike was the common refrain. It was the tires. It was everything else, but the rider when it came to Stoner. Meanwhile no one ever questioned the massive equipment advantages Rossi had. All of his accomplishments were seen as legit by the sporting public and the media at large.
If racing is all you ever cared about doing, that kind of treatment gets old.
Funny thing is, Stoner is not the only one to ever express the desire for, or to state they missed pure racing without all the ......... The late Ayrton Senna gave an interview in 1993 where he talked about these things, and who his greatest rival was. Much to the shock of many, it wasn't Alain Prost with whom he had spent the prior 5 seasons locked in a blood feud with.
Not everyone is wired the way guys like Rossi or Nicky Hayden are. Do you call Kevin Schwantz a quitter? He walked away when he could easily have kept going, he retired after 3 races in the 1995 season. By your, and others definitions, that is quitting, yet I don't see his name ever mentioned. Stoner at least finished out the 2012 season. Schwantz didn't even finish out the 1995 season! Yet the vitriol is exclusively for Stoner. At least be consistent if nothing else. The mental fortitude it takes to walk away knowing everyone is going to criticize you for it is remarkable...and when you consider how much money HRC was offering him to come back for 2013, it's even more remarkable.
He did what he wanted to do after 23 years of racing. It's his life.
