Happy birthday Vale, but how many more?
What are you going to do on your 40th birthday? Or, given motorcycling’s ever-aging demographic, what did you do?
A bit of gentle sky-diving/whitewater rafting, perhaps? Set off on a mammoth touring holiday? Or down the pub with a few mates to get bladdered to acknowledge the passing of an unwelcome landmark? I can’t even remember what I did, but I can take an educated guess at what Valentino Rossi did last Saturday: a hefty session in the gym, maybe a run, then a bunch of interminable laps at his Tavullia training ranch keeping a gang of fast and hungry kids respectful. Under the guise of training them.
I know Rossi fans are over-eager to find offence in anything I say about the great man (which is in itself a temptation), but it really is impossible to carp about a career that has glittered so brightly and is perpetuated by a man so determined not to pay attention to the strictures of time and aging. And still so blindingly fast that it takes the very
‘Can he win eight more times? I don’t think so’
best of the next generation to stop him adding to his tally of 115 GP wins… riders barely out of nappies when the long-haired teenager took his first victory at Brno in 1996. Marquez was three, Morbidelli two, and Viñales just over one on that sunny afternoon. On his day, Valentino can still teach them all lessons.
Admittedly, those days have dwindled over the past couple of years, his win rate slipping back to 30.02 percent (Marquez 37.6, then Lorenzo 24.1). Rossi needed rain for his last win at Assen in 2017, with Marquez beaten back to third. But he hasn’t had much help from his Yamaha, which has been slipping backwards. And he still damn-near won in Malaysia last year.
The all-time total of 122 GP wins, set by Giacomo Agostini, is tantalisingly close and yet seems impossibly out of reach. Can Valentino really win seven more times to equal Ago, or eight times to beat him?
I don’t think he can, but I’ve made a fool of myself often enough by not heeding the dictum… never underrate Valentino Rossi.
The oldest premier-class champion was the first, 1949’s Les Graham (AJS), aged 37; the oldest in any class was 250 NSU rider H-P Muller, 45 in 1955.
So, fan-baiting aside, here’s hoping, eh?