This is for you Ooost. And any other US members or Hopper and Hayden fans for that matter. This is a section from a mag called 'Motorcycle Racer'. It comes from a section on John Hopkins, and what they(motorcycle racer) think will happen in a few years time...
"think of it like a stretching piece of elastic. As it started to spring forward from the halcyon days of the early 80's we saw the Lawson/Gardner era with flashes from the likes of Sarron and Haslam, then we find the Schwantz/Rainey era with a hanging on of Gardner and the emerging Dohhan, then as we approach the end of the stretching talent elastic we find, at the peak (and conveniently forgeting the Criville year) a neat handover from the lone god Doohan to the equally seperate yet brilliant Rossi.
And so, as the elastic starts to contract again, we see the era of the single dominant alpha rider start to slip (probably), and as Rossi ponders on how to leave bike racing to become... oh i dunno, lets suppose he goes on to be the worlds most successful international chess player... does it mean that we can look to the new era of a few GP race winners every season again?
Because if this racing game is cyclical then maybe, just maybe, were about to see a whole new era. In a couple of years time are we going to be hailing the new Rainey and Schwantz era all over again?
Lets assume that Rossi has gone, Sete has done a Criville; hes decide to grow grapes and enjoy life as a one-time world champion. For the erratic brilliance of Luca Cadalora we'll drop in Marco Melandri for this example. And that leaves a couple of American guys left to scrap out the honours.
One is Nicky Hayden, happy in the Honda homestead as a progressing star on the orange and black missile - the other is John Hopkins.
Ok, so we've taken some pretty huge chunks of jounalistic licence to make this point. But what were trying to say is that in John Hopkins and countryman Nicky Hayden maybe we have the next Schwantz and Rainey"
Very exciting dont you think?....
"think of it like a stretching piece of elastic. As it started to spring forward from the halcyon days of the early 80's we saw the Lawson/Gardner era with flashes from the likes of Sarron and Haslam, then we find the Schwantz/Rainey era with a hanging on of Gardner and the emerging Dohhan, then as we approach the end of the stretching talent elastic we find, at the peak (and conveniently forgeting the Criville year) a neat handover from the lone god Doohan to the equally seperate yet brilliant Rossi.
And so, as the elastic starts to contract again, we see the era of the single dominant alpha rider start to slip (probably), and as Rossi ponders on how to leave bike racing to become... oh i dunno, lets suppose he goes on to be the worlds most successful international chess player... does it mean that we can look to the new era of a few GP race winners every season again?
Because if this racing game is cyclical then maybe, just maybe, were about to see a whole new era. In a couple of years time are we going to be hailing the new Rainey and Schwantz era all over again?
Lets assume that Rossi has gone, Sete has done a Criville; hes decide to grow grapes and enjoy life as a one-time world champion. For the erratic brilliance of Luca Cadalora we'll drop in Marco Melandri for this example. And that leaves a couple of American guys left to scrap out the honours.
One is Nicky Hayden, happy in the Honda homestead as a progressing star on the orange and black missile - the other is John Hopkins.
Ok, so we've taken some pretty huge chunks of jounalistic licence to make this point. But what were trying to say is that in John Hopkins and countryman Nicky Hayden maybe we have the next Schwantz and Rainey"
Very exciting dont you think?....
