"I DIDN'T WANT TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP WITH SECOND PLACE..."
was an Edwards win, but race two saw Bayliss out front and trying to bring his team-mate into play, by leading at the slowest possible speed. If Bayliss won, with Xaus second and Edwards third, then the Australian would win, but even the fiery talent of Ruben Xaus couldn’t stay with the championship duo. With the race (and title) down to a fight between the two, Edwards showed his bottle by refusing to settle for second place. “I didn’t just want to win it from second place,” he’d tell reporters. “I just had to win it and nothin’ else mattered at the time.”
Edwards would take the title, 552 points and 11 wins to Bayliss’ 541 points and 14 wins and with a winning streak of nine races!
Troy would later say: “A lot of people talk about that season. I dominated the start, which was a bit of a surprise to be honest, but pretty soon he began to claw those points back. That didn’t surprise me: I always knew it was going to be between me and him that season, going for the title. I wasn’t that bothered to lose to Colin in 2002 as it was a great year’s racing across the season and a fantastic weekend of racing at Imola. Yeah, I wish I had won, but after the event I didn’t lose any sleep over it. For Colin, it was a superb way to end the year. I guess the best back-handed compliment I could have given him after 2002 was this: If I wasn’t racing against him, I would have been backing him!”
For Colin Edwards, despite a decade or more in Motogp, it was to be the highlight of his career – and rightly so: what a comeback!