Valentino Rossi is the greatest bike rider in the worldKIERAN FAGAN checks out his form
HE'S young, cheeky looking, seven times a world motorcycle champion, and clearly enjoys himself. This Italian man-child is an artist on two wheels, with a gut understanding of how far a man can push a machine along the most punishing racing circuits in the world.
Another phase of his career will almost certainly see him join the Ferrari Formula 1 motor racing team. He's Valentino Rossi, known to fans worldwide as Vale. "Many people say we christened Valentino because he was born two days after St Valentine's day but he's named after my best friend [who drowned]. He'd be Valentino even if he was born in December," says his father Graziano, who won a Grand Prix on a 250 cc Morbidelli in 1979, the year his son was born.
Graziano's race number was 46, and Vale uses it to this day.
As a child Vale raced bikes and karts. "My first victory was over my parents' fears, the second over the lack of faith in my abilities." Today, he says, it is natural for a biker to take test-drives in Ferraris - where he is currently achieving very impressive times. He just went from BMX to kart, now motorbikes to cars.
"Grand Prix bikes are the baddest assed bikes on earth because they have more brakes, more grip, and more horsepower. Valentino has to constantly juggle body weight and input to get on to the fattest part of the tyre so he can rip as much horsepower as possible through that contact," says writer Mat Oxley.
"The trick is to keep the rear wheel spinning, too little and you don't go fast enough, too much and you slide off. Everything happens very, very quickly. In and out of a five second 130 mph turn can seem like 45 seconds, and a typical grand prix involves 500-600 such manoeuvres."
But there's Vale the clown too. He dyed his hair orange to race in Holland. On the track, he jumped off his bike to use the race marshall's Portaloo, rode a victory lap with a friend dressed as a chicken on the pillion, and developed alter egos, one based on an Italian version of Donald Duck. He may be one of the greatest riders the world has seen, but he is still only 27, and he's been winning big races for nine of those years, world champion for seven.
Vale says the clowning and his total concentration when racing are two sides of the same coin. "On the bike my mind is free of every single thought apart from those linked to riding."
A moment before getting on the bike he is joking and laughing. But when the visor comes down, "I can isolate everything else. Nobody made me like this, nobody taught me like this, racing just comes naturally."
So much done, so young. He was ninth in the world championship on Aprilia 125cc bikes in 1996, and won the following year. In 1998, he moved up to 250cc Aprilias, and was placed second that year, and won outright in 1999. Then he switched to 500cc Hondas, coming second in 2000, and winning outright in 2001, 2002 and 2003.
He needed a fresh challenge, but he reckoned he still had some biking years left. So he switched to the slower Yamaha bike and won the MotoGP world championship in 2004. And on the way, having just won a race nobody said he could win, he hopped off his bike and sat on the grass shaking with laughter.
But something serious had happened. Vale reckons the day he won on the Yamaha in Welkom in South Africa 2003 changed the sport completely. "From that point on, we riders and what we thought and felt about the bikes, the tracks, about everything, had to be respected."
That change was profound. Hitherto the big teams tended to go shopping for the best engineers to build the fastest bikes, and hire the best riders for them.
Now rider and engineer had to listen to each other, work together. No longer could the rider blame the bike, nor the engineer the rider. The brain-or-brawn battle of which is most important, was squared.
The recently published Valentino Rossi MotoGenius, by Mat Oxley, (Haynes publishing stg £8.00), is a lively paperback read. What if I Never Tried It, Valentino Rossi - the autobiography (Century) is a lively hardback and Eason's has it for €23.50.