#from assen 2011

[batsplat]

all time great crash photo

[coimbrabertone]

MotoGP and the KTM Situation

So...KTM's parent company, Pierer Mobility Group, is in a bit of a mess.

A $3 billion in the red kind of mess.

How did this happen? Well, the short answer is that Pierer Mobility Group and KTM expanded too fast, too quickly, and now their debt is catching up with them. As for the long story, well...

Stefan Pierer, an Austrian businessman, founded an investment company called Cross Industries (what is now Pierer Mobility Group) in 1987, and in 1992, he took over KTM Motorrad in his native Austria. In 1994, KTM launched the Duke line, which took the traditionally dirt-bike focused KTM brand into the road bike business for the first time.

Dirt bikes remained a key element of KTM's business - and racing dirt bikes in things like Motocross and the Dakar Rally is a huge part of KTM's identity - but the allure of road bikes is what we'll be focusing on for this story.

A series of adventure and supermoto bikes followed, before in 2003, KTM entered Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing for the first time. While Ducati entered into the 4-stroke 990cc top class that same year, KTM instead focused their efforts on the 2-stroke 125cc class, as well as the 250cc class from 2005 onwards.

They took their first win at the 2004 Malaysian Grand Prix when Casey Stoner won the 125cc during his only season on KTM machinery, followed by a championship challenge the very next year. Mika Kallio won at Estoril, the Sachsenring, Motegi, and Valencia, whilst teammate Gabor Talmacsi won at Mugello, Assen, and Qatar. Qatar and Valencia were 1-2 finishes for KTM, and ultimately, Kallio finished second in the 125cc standings while Talmacsi finished third. Julian Simon on a third bike would win in the wet at Donington Park and finish eighth, putting three KTMs in the top ten in 125s in 2005 - a very respectable showing in just their third season competing.

Kallio would again finish second in 125 in 2006, with three wins to his name, whilst in 250cc, Hiroshi Aoyama won at Turkey and Japan, finishing third in those standings.

Aoyama and Kallio would both compete in 250cc in 2007, with Aoyama winning at the Sachsenring and Malaysia, while Kallio won in the wet at Motegi and then again at the season finale in Valencia. Aoyama would finish sixth while Kallio was seventh.

2008 would mark a full barreled 250 effort with Aoyama and Kallio joined by returning third bike man Julian Simon. Kallio would perform well, winning at Jerez, a wet Shanghai, and at a dry Donington Park, but Aoyama and Simon would go winless. The 125cc effort had also atrophied by now, with the most notable result being some rookie called Marc Marquez taking a third place at Donington.

KTM's attention was fading by this point, and their road bike efforts turned from Grand Prix racing and towards their new RC 1190 superbike. Additionally, the X-Bow track car gave KTM an exciting new toy to play with.

Their Grand Prix efforts were winding down.

KTM only competed in the 125cc class in 2009, and with Marc Marquez only managing a single podium at Jerez, they decided not to continue for 2010.

Marc Marquez in 2010 would move to the Red Bull Ajo team riding a Derbi/Aprilia RSA-125 and would win 10 races to dominate the championship.

So yeah...it wasn't a rider problem, their bike just kinda sucked by that point.

Meanwhile, KTM continued to expand their company. In 1995, they acquired Husaberg AB, a manufacturer established to keep dirt bike production in Sweden after Husqvarna's parent company Cagiva moved their production to Varese, Italy. KTM would in 2003 move Husaberg production to Mattighofen, Austria, making the whole thing rather pointless. Next, in 2007, came ventures with Indian giant Bajaj, who began distributing KTMs in India in exchange for a 14.5% stake.

In 2011 a similar collaboration would begin with CFMoto in China, which in 2017, became a downright joint venture between them and KTM.

Then in 2013, Husqvarna - now in BMW's hands - was sold to the Pierer Mobility Group, who promptly merged it and Husaberg, so instead of being produced in Sweden or Italy, it was all now in Austria.

In 2012, KTM would reenter GP racing with the introduction of the 4-stroke 250cc Moto3 class. They'd win the championship with Sandro Cortese, while in 2013...they won everything. Maverick Vinales in first, Alex Rins in second, Luis Salom in third, and Alex Marquez in fourth were all on KTM RC250GPs.

Fifth place was Jonas Folger on a KTM-engined Kalex.

Complete and utter domination.

On the back of this, KTM planned to enter the top class for the first time. With a V4 engine, a steel trellis frame, and Red Bull sponsorship, KTM entered the RC16 in the 2016 Valencian GP ahead of a full debut in 2017.

Who rode the RC16 at Valencia? None other than Mika Kallio, the Finn returning to KTM as their test and development rider after stints with Ducati in MotoGP and Marc VDS in Moto2.

Pol Espargaro and Bradley Smith would be their full-time riders for 2017 and 2018, with Pol scoring KTM's first podium at the 2018 Valencian GP - KTM sure does have a weird affinity with Valencia, eh?

2019 would mark two big changes: first is that Johann Zarco replaced Bradley Smith, second is that KTM gained a satellite team for the first time. Yup, after competing as Monster Energy Yamaha for ten years, Tech3 became Red Bull KTM Tech3, with Hafizh Syahrin and Miguel Oliveira riding for them.

Zarco would force his way out of KTM before the year was even over, forcing Kallio to fill in for him at the final six races, but other than that...KTM's 2019 was more of a building year. They collected some points while, in the background, KTM began to move away from the steel trellis, aluminum swingarm, and old school screamer engine.

The frame became a more typical steel/aluminum hybrid, the swingarm a radical carbon fiber, and the engine conformed to the now ubiquitous big bang firing order.

The results? Rookie Brad Binder wins the 2020 Czech Grand Prix in just his third start, while on the Tech3 bike, Miguel Oliveira wins at Styria and Portimao.

KTM also took the opportunity to buy out the struggling GasGas brand in 2019, giving Pierer Mobility Group its third brand.

KTM was winning in MotoGP, it was expanding its business, but it was also already signing its own death warrant.

With the purchase of GasGas, Pierer Mobility Group now had three different brands that were predominantly in the dirt bike business. They tried to position GasGas as the entry level brand, KTM in the middle, and the Husqvarna as a premium brand, sort of trying to be the General Motors of motorcycles, there's just two problems with that:

One: Bikes are so much more niche compared to cars.

Two: even in cars the multi-brand thing doesn't work so well, with GM killing off storied brands like Oldsmobile and Pontiac in recent memory, along with more recent ventures like Saturn and Hummer failing to carve out a niche.

Nevertheless, with COVID giving a lot of people a lot of time on their hands, KTM initially had very strong sales. Lots of people were trying out their motorcycles for the first time, and with KTM giving variety between dirt bikes, road bikes, and even teasing a return to the superbike market with the RC 990, maybe things would work out.

They did not.

KTM banked on the COVID bubble.

They spent money acquiring the likes of GasGas, Husqvarna, and now a 50.1% stake in MV Agusta as well, they banked on joint ventures with Bajaj and CFMoto giving them access to the eastern markets only to develop a reputation in India for being overpriced and having bad build quality. On top of this, KTM began the scummy business practice of hiding riding software behind a paywall, most notably with their cruise control.

(For no reason at all, I'm also going to point out that Stefan Pierer has a seat on the Mercedes-Benz supervisory board.)

The end result of all this? KTM sits on 265,000 unsold bikes. Unsold bikes which only meet Euro 5 emissions standards, meaning that when the Euro 5+ standards come into effect in March, KTM will not be able to sell those bikes in Europe, where, with 11.8% market share, KTM is the largest motorcycle manufacturer.

Furthermore, KTM was not able to pay its workers their December salaries until last Friday, the 27th. November salaries remain unpaid, and Christmas bonuses have been cut entirely.

300 jobs at KTM are expected to be cut in January.

So...with all this going on, there are some big, big question marks about whether KTM will be able to continue racing in MotoGP.

They have released a statement confirming they will race in 2025 and with KTM having already sending two of their three factory rally raid riders to Dakar - the third is out with a leg injury - that seems reasonably secure.

Beyond that? It's unclear.

It's unclear how much development KTM will be doing to stay competitive as well. Initial reports suggested that KTM has already paused development, but KTM disputes this.

Now, a recent Austrian report says that KTM plans to withdraw in 2026, citing contracts and not wanting the PR disaster of early termination. What does that mean.

Well, KTM is contracted with Dorna through 2026, the end of the current regulation cycle.

Brad Binder has two years left on his contract, while Acosta, Vinales, and Bastianini are all on multiyear deals - traditional wisdom in racing says that multiyear deals typically translate to 2 years + a 1 year optional extension.

Furthermore, an engine freeze is coming into MotoGP in 2026, which will reduce development costs.

So...I believe that this means that KTM will see out their contracts, racing through 2025 and 2026 with their current set of riders. 2025 is already budgeted and we know that's secure, while seeing out the 2026 season and leaving at the end of 2026 seems to match up with these Austrian reports.

This is still a developing story, so I may well be wrong here.

It's also important to remember that this is about more than racing, it's about the people. Many, many, many people work at KTM, both on the production bike side and on the race team. These people are going through a tough time right now with this KTM bankruptcy drama, and you have to hope things turn out well for them.

I'm not much of a KTM fan - I don't oppose them either, I suppose I'm more of a neutral then - but I'd hate to lose them in MotoGP. I'd hate even more to see people lose their jobs because the ownership chased unsustainable growth.

That COVID bubble has been vicious to the business world.

[motogp-museum]

Tag Navigation and Intro

Hi!! It's @kissingwalls (this is not a side blog though)

Tags:

Year

year: 2010, year: 2011, year: 2012, year: 2013, year: 2014, year: 2015, year: 2016, year: 2017, year: 2018, year: 2019, year: 2020

Blogs

blog: repsol-ariel

blog: marquez93-blog

blog: sicar26

blog: motoleafs

blog: aleixespargargo

blog: mototwinkclub

blog: porfuera93

Rider

Marc Marquez

Alex Marquez

Jorge Lorenzo

Dani Pedrosa

Valentino Rossi

Enea Bastianini

Maverick Viñales

Fabio Quartaro

Aleix Espargaro

Pol Espargaro

Alex Rins

Miguel Oliveira

Tito Rabat

Uccio Salucci

Pecco Bagnaia

Casey Stoner

Luca Marini

Andrea Dovizioso

Franco Morbidelli

Andrea Migno

Cal Crutchlow

Jorge Martin

Fabio Di Giannantonio

Joan Mir

Rider filtered by year

To find the rider's posts from a specific year, type their initials, rider number, a colon, a space, and then the year into the search bar. For example mm93: 2013 (there are a couple of people I haven't done this for, so check their main tag first)

Here are a few common ones :) (i would put them all but the link limit is humbling me)

Vale:

vr46: 2013

vr46: 2014

vr46: 2015

vr46: 2016

Dani:

dp26: 2011

dp26: 2012

dp26: 2013

dp26: 2014

dp26: 2015

Jorge L:

jl99: 2011

jl99: 2012

jl99: 2013

jl99: 2014

jl99: 2015

Marc:

mm93: 2012

mm93: 2013

mm93: 2014

mm93: 2015

mm93: 2016

Ships (romantic/ platonic/ familial)

Some of these are just people who are together a lot.

pedrenzo

rosquez

team tiny

vr26 riders academy

Jorge/Pecco

Marquez brothers

espargabros

Vale/Uccio

lucalex

dovquez

Organisation

moto2

moto3

Press Conference

bikes: year (eg. bikes: 2015)

the ranch

Format

type: gif

type: picture

type: writing

type: video

type: fanart

type: quote

Circuit

misano

motegi

mugello

assen

phillip island

san marino

argentina

brno

catalunya

portugal

cota

qatar

le mans

aragón

valencia

silverstone

sepang

laguna seca

indy

mandalika

chang

red bull ring

Circuit with year

You can also search by circuit: year (eg. catalunya: 2015). Just make sure you put a space after the colon. Unless the post said where it was though, I did not put a location tag.

----------

Intro:

(i'll just put it at the bottom so i remember to delete it)

I have been hoarding all of these (there are like 1000 more in my draft and queue lol) for a while now in my draft bc even tho they are like 3 note gifs, they are historical artefacts to meeee.

Anyway, I've got a cold, and so to occupy myself, I decided to just make a blog so that everything can be organised and easy (ish, this is tumblr after all) to find!

I know heaps of my fellow ✨motogp tumblrinas ✨have made archives for their favs, and you are all braver than me, bc I would lose all the gifs immediately if I tried to create new archival posts. So I just reblogged everything and am going to hope for the best in terms of copyright lol

But yeah, these aren't just my favs. This is more just a snapshot of the fandom at different periods. I only reblogged the deactivated ones, but, y'all, use the posts as little gateways to blogs from that time period, it is FACINATING.

As always, peer review is welcome! If i completely messed up a tag (very likely, since i used the mass tag editor), you're welcome to let me know. Also if there's a ship tag, fun tag or something you want me to add in the mass tag editor, lemme know! more than happy to add literally anything ✨✨

I only started this today, so it's very much a work in progress! All the things without a link are because the posts that match up with them are in the queue. I also need to add the ones i forgot

[moonshynecybin]

In the beef between Valentino and Marc I can't take a position. This will be a little long but allow me to articulate my thoughts.

I understand where both of them were coming from and both points of view. Why?

I think that to better understand Vale it is important to keep some factors in mind: 2015 was the first year after the disastrous two years at Ducati where he had a chance to compete for the world championship, in 2011 one of his closest friends - not exactly known for being the most cautious driver on the track - died, and finally he was getting old. It's also important to keep some things in mind about Marc: he saw his idol complimenting him since before he took part in MotoGP, he was very young and super thirsty for victory. That said, things started to go downhill at Assen in 2015, Rossi made a Rossi old style overtake and Marc got a taste of it which must have been a bit bitter, so bitter that he called himself “the moral winner of the race", for Valentino, however, that moment was a factor that certainly gave him extra determination, that made him remember who he was before slowly losing himself. Jorge Lorenzo also said it in one of his interviews: “The last straw was in Assen, when they touched each other on the chicane. They were blaming each other" explained Lorenzo, according to him and also according to Valentino that was the moment in which Marc decided to make Rossi lose the world championship. Then when they raced in Australia and Rossi found himself just 11 points behind Lorenzo, he was convinced that Marc had favored Lorenzo at Philip Island, saying that every time he passed Marc then Marc overtook him but only to slow down and give the possibility of letting Jorge pass and putting distance between the two. The fact that Marquez didn't really enjoy Assen was certainly a theory that went in Vale’s favor. In a tense situation like that you tend to overanalyze everything and therefore I understand how easy it was to find malice in Marc's gestures. At that point for Vale it was as if he was fighting for the world championship against two people instead of one, which explains what happened in Sepang which was the culmination of something that had started well before. Marc was in Valentino's way the whole time and so I'm sure Rossi kicked him (even if he says he didn’t) having lost his patience. Imagine driving to try to win your tenth title against your teammate who is faster than you and having a this new talent standing in your way out of annoyance. Vale at this point wasn't racing to be competitive, he was racing to win THE title and instead suffered a defeat both on a sporting and personal level.

At the same time we must also try to understand Marc's point of view: I'm pretty sure that before Sepang Marquez didn't actually intend to sabotage Lorenzo, he certainly didn't like what had happened in Argentina and Assen. Up until that point Valentino hadn't really had the chance to fight him to his full potential, so seeing how Vale was beating him and acting lowkey cocky about it afterwards must not have been very pleasant for Marc. Sepang was the moment in which he decided to repay with the same coin, I don't think that during the race in Sepang Marc was specifically trying to sabotage Valentino, I think it was more of an almost involuntary reaction due to the precedents, but after Sepang without a doubt anyone else would have preferred to see anyone win the world championship other than Valentino. So for Valentino what Marc did was just a child's whim and for Marquez what Rossi did was the reaction of an insecure adult man. I have no difficulty understanding Marc's resentment, if you can call it that, towards Vale, especially knowing how competitive Marc is, but at the same time I also understand how all of Marquez's actions were easily misunderstood by Valentino, especially given the situation in where he was.

for sure man!! 90% of what i do on this blog is try and get at the root of where they’re both coming from during 2015 and this is a lot of it and very well articulated!! and you don’t have to like. pick a side and have a hard line stance here it’s sports who gaf… i just love marc he’s my baby girl…

however. i WILL say. the past where i start slipping into beating vale with hammers territory is the press conference before the race and then the public backlash afterwards. marc was an adult for sure, but it’s GLARINGLY obvious to me that vale had a LOT more control in this situation in terms of the media, and he leveraged that against marc deliberately in ways that kinda sucked! marc got his house broken into! marc got death threats! marc thought, okay maybe he’s not my friend anymore but he’s still my hero, and then vale BLINDSIDED him publicly :( i know vale was going through it and thought marc was sabotaging him but. marc still rates those few weeks as some of the worst of his life. especially considering how young he was at the time. so i still love vale but i’m hashtag team marc here… like he collected his bikes!!! while they were racing!!!! he loved him. and vale REALLY hurt him.

[bobendsneyder64]

So I was watching back the episodes from the special TT news they make every year in the week before the TT and learned some amazing things I wanted to share with you

This post will be about Assen

- the first ever TT was in 1925 and was 28 kilometers long. It was from Rolde via Borger and Schoonlo back to Rolde. It moved to Assen in 1926 because there was a part in the original circuit that was a sand road. This was only 800 metres long but the organisations and officials that organised it didn't wan't to put asphalt on this small part. Because it was a street circuit the whole circuit had to be asphalt. Assen immediately took their chance to host the TT from then on.

- while there have been a lot of changes to the circuit over the years, the place of the start/finish line never changed. Ever since 1926 it has been on the same place and never moved, not even an inch. The circuit has become shorter and wider, but the start/finish line never changed.

- in 2025 the TT exist a 100 years and it will be a special year. They want to do a lot of special stuff and release special material, like a book and a movie. This year, however, was only the 92nd edition of the TT but that is because in all these years, there were 6 years were they couldn't organise one. 5 years were missed because of WW2 and one year was missed because of covid. So the 100th TT will be in 2031.

- in the last 13 races in Assen there were also 13 different pole-sitters: Jorge Lorenzo (2010), Marco Simoncelli (2011), Casey Stoner (2012), Cal Crutchlow (2013), Aleix Espargaró (2014), Valentino Rossi (2015), Andrea Dovizioso (2016), Johann Zarco (2017), Marc Marquez (2018), Fabio Quartararo (2019), Maverick Viñales (2021), Pecco Bagnaia (2022) and Marco Bezzecchi (2023)

This is post 1 of 2. Find post 2 here

[sbknews]

Alvaro Bautista secures 2022 WorldSBK crown

The 37 year-old rider secured the 2022 WorldSBK Riders’ Championship at Mandalika. Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.It Racing – Ducati) fought hard during the 2022 season, resisting the charge of 2021 WorldSBK Champion Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pata Yamaha with Brixx WorldSBK) and six-time Champion Jonathan Rea (Kawasaki Racing Team WorldSBK). He became WorldSBK’s 19th Champion, and the second Spanish rider to be crowned WorldSBK Champion after Carlos Checa in 2011; Checa was also Ducati’s last WorldSBK Champion. Bautista returned to Ducati for the 2022 season after two seasons away and did so in perfect fashion, taking his first win of the season in the Tissot Superpole Race at the season-opening Aragon Round. He also left MotorLand Aragon as the title leader following his Race 2 victory. Rea was able to fight back at Assen but that lasted for just one day as Bautista extended his lead again in Race 2, with the newly-crowned Champion leading the way from Assen’s Race 2 onwards. A Race 1 crash at Donington Park dented Bautista’s lead but he bounced back in style; taking 15 podiums in the 18 races that followed including a hat-trick at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. A crucial part of Bautista’s title-winning campaign was his fights with both Razgatlioglu and Rea, particularly with the 2021 Champion throughout the Estoril, Portuguese and Argentinean Rounds. Bautista began his career in the Spanish Championship from 1995 to 2002. In 2002, he was fighting for the title until the final race. In the same year, he made his first appearance in the FIM 125cc World Championship as a wildcard. He became a 125cc Grand Prix winner in 2006 at the Spanish GP. With eighth victories claimed that season, he secured his first World Championship title. The Spanish rider then moved up to the 250cc class, claiming 28 podium places including eight victories. Bautista stepped up to the FIM MotoGP™ World Championship in 2010. During his eighth seasons in MotoGP™, he claimed three podium places and one pole position, with a fifth place as his best classification in the Championship standings in 2012. In 2019, Bautista made his WorldSBK debut with Ducati, finishing his rookie season with 16 wins, 24 podium places, 4 pole positions and 15 fastest laps as he secured second place in the Championship standings. In 2020, he switched to Honda, racing for the Team HRC squad. Over the 2020 and 2021 seasons, he claimed three podium places for the Japanese manufacturer before returning to Ducati and the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati team for the 2022 season. With 14 wins and 29 podium places, Alvaro Bautista became the 2022 WorldSBK Champion at Mandalika. Bautista becomes the ninth different rider to take a Riders’ Championship for Ducati with the Italian manufacturer securing their 15th Riders’ Championship overall. He’s the third different rider in three years to take the crown, as well as being from a third different country and on a third different bike, emphasising the competitive parity in WorldSBK. The newly crowned WorldSBK Champion will remain with Ducati in 2023 and both will aim to continue challenging many records.

Alvaro Bautista, Aruba.It Racing - Ducati: “It’s incredible, I’m so happy. It’s a dream come true, especially after the last two years and all the difficulties. I want to say thanks to everyone who trusted me, to give me this chance to fight for good places and we got the Championship at the first time of trying. Today was the first time I felt a bit nervous or stressed, but it was in Race 2 on the grid before the start. I tried to manage the emotions and when I was in first, I was making a lot of mistakes because I had too many thoughts in my head! I just preferred to stay second behind Toprak, but he was very strong, so I could just follow him. So happy. It’s difficult to know what to say. I’m just so happy. During the whole season, I was so happy because I had a lot of experience from the past. I tried to be the best possible rider, not make mistakes. I think our performance has been really, really high. I think I had the best performance level ever from Toprak and Jonathan. They performed at a really high level in all races. I was lucky that I made fewer mistakes than them. What’s important is also consistency. I could beat Jonathan, a six-time World Champion and Toprak, a one-time Champion, breaking all the records at all the tracks which means the level is so high. We can win with this amazing level.” Giulio Nava, Bautista's Crew Chief: “We worked really hard for this; this team and Ducati. I’ve been working with Alvaro for many years and I’m super happy to be here with him, seeing him achieving these results. It means a lot. I’m very lucky to work with him. You create very a strong relationship together. We joke together. Alvaro is like my brother. It’s difficult for me to explain what it means, but it means the world to see him winning.” Luigi Dall’Igna, Ducati Corse General Manager: “It is a wonderful day for us. We worked a lot with Alvaro in the past and in 2019 we did a fantastic job until the middle of the season. In the end, we could not win the crown. Today, in the end, and it was a fantastic emotion. It was a special day. This is probably one of the best seasons of his life. This year, and 2006, were two really amazing seasons for him. He won the 2006 125cc World Championship and today he won WorldSBK. He’s a real fantastic rider and I’m really, really happy he could get the title today.”

World Championship Career: 2002-2006: 125cc - First Race: Spanish GP 2002 | Best result: P1 2007-2009: 250cc - First Race: Qatar GP 2007 | Best result: P1 2010-2018: MotoGP™ - First Race: Qatar GP 2010 | Best result: P3 2019-2022: WorldSBK – First Race: Australian Round 2019 | Best result: P1 2022: World Superbike Champion Rider Statistics First round: Phillip Island 2019 Race starts: 130 Wins: 30 Podium places: 56 Pole positions: 5 Fastest laps: 27 Title: 1

For more info checkout our dedicated World Superbike News page World Superbike News Or visit the official World Superbike website WorldSBK.com Read the full article

[ferrarigays-moved-to-ferrarism]

Top 5 races

hmmm thanks, again a hard one! even though i have been watching racing for a while my memory is hazy so most are recent gps.

monza 2019 - look as a ferrari fan i don’t think it gets a lot better than il predestinato winning monza in front of the tifosi - stuff of dreams. a championship maybe but as a race this was it. i am a sucker for emotional wins and i’ll think about that race forever.

phillip island 2015 - after watching this during the break i see why people think this is one of the best races - pure entertainment and racing all the way with the win going on the last lap - amazing.

interlagos 2007 - what can I say, the last time we won a championship and it was one of the tightest fought championships in f1 history. was the championship in the grand scheme of things maybe more of mclaren’s to lose? absolutely, but in the end there was only one name carved to the trophy and it was kimi’s. watching this race live and stressing for such a long time about our chances, wow it was tense! and as a finnish tifosa, there was quite literally nothing better than to see a finn win with ferrari. and with hindsight, how lewis ran that race after the first lap and produced a comeback drive and subsequently how eloquently he spoke after the affair and the year they had had - just showing off his class and what an amazing driver he already was.

sachsenring 2021 - as I said, i am first and foremost a fan of the emotional moments. don’t get me wrong, i love racing/sports for the action but the storylines and people behind the races are what keeps it going for me. this was one of the first motogp races i watched and although we saw little overtakes, i enjoyed miguel’s hunt for the win and how the race played out. but watching marc win again after all the torrid times - stuff of dreams just like monza but in very different ways.

suzuka 2005 - there are a few older races that i remember but i rewatched this a while back and still one of my faves. i watched this live with my grandma and she remembers how I started shrieking half way to go like ”kimi is gonna win!” and I was very much looking forward to that. i love suzuka as a track and there were so many great overtakes. again, overtake of the lead on the last lap after starting from the back of the grid? kimi räikkönen masterclass, one of his best races.

there are a ton of other races that also come to mind, for sentimental reasons and pure racing, such as canada 2011, assen 2016, spain 1996, interlagos 2021 and so on and so on but off the top of my head these are what came to mind.

put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go

[batsplat]

since you made a few posts about motogp and tennis I have to ask: how would valentino’s and sete’s rivalry look like in your mind than mapped onto 00’s atp tour? and also THE CURSE!!!!! (this is an au where tennis has more whimsy obviously) what would it look like in tennis realities?

got this ask and immediately dropped everything to have a think about it. let's do this

I think valentino's earlier rivalries are trickier to conceptualise in tennis terms than inter-alien rivalries, because the vibes of valentino's early rivalries kinda depend on said rivals not actually beating him to championships, aka the biggest prize in the sport. the biggest prize in tennis is slams and like... it just isn't feasible for anybody to have a chokehold on all the slams for five years. quite frankly I don't even like tennis au's that start throwing around calendar slams unless they're extremely careful about it. in the entire open era, exactly 1 (one) person managed a calendar slam - steffi graf as a teenager over three decades ago. while it is theoretically achievable in the modern game - djokovic got within one match of it until the pressure got to him he ran into an opponent who played at an incredible, divine, beyond phenomenal level to beat him in the us open final - it is very unlikely to happen for various reasons and certainly not by a young male player. this is a long way of saying that valentino is simply not winning twenty consecutive slams from 2001-05. noughties federer gives us a sense of the upper limit of what kind of sustained dominance is possible... generally I think giving valentino a prolonged run at 2-3 slams per year is the way to go here

^noughties federer, which to me represents a pretty hard upper limit for how many slams I'm willing to give someone in such a concentrated time period

the rule in tennis is that if you want to effectively lock out The Field from slams, you need at least 2-3 consistently dominant players. one player cannot effectively lock out the whole field from slams. it's the pack hunter phenomenon - the big three/four's hold on the slams was so enduring and so crushing because whenever one of them was injured or not feeling it or whatever, somebody else was there to pick up the slack. to some extent this is comparable to motogp's alien era, though obviously big three dominance lasted a fair bit longer. neither valentino nor later marc alone could lock out the rest of the field from the occasional race win - but from 2007-15... four non-aliens I believe (vermeulen le mans 2007, capirossi motegi 2007, dovi donington 2009, spies assen 2011, not double checking this because I want to Believe I know this off the top of my head) won races. all the other races were won by one of five guys. obviously in motogp there's also a technology factor, better bikes factory vs independent tyre change + electronics leading to ten race winners in 2016 bla bla bla, but you get the point. all of this means that this version of sete, even if he's the main challenger for valentino in *only two years*... has to win slams. you can come up with a lame workaround for this - for instance, say that all the continental europeans simply suck at grass and you get a 'sampras can't play on clay' nineties type scenario where the fictional bruguera-type equivalent keeps winning wimbledon titles - but idk,, this feels way too convoluted and kind of narratively unsatisfying. so let us just take it as a given that sete is... a late bloomer but one who does end up with an objectively very respectable career. which obviously inevitably changes the vibe of this rivalry at least somewhat

it is at this point that you do come crashing into another major hurdle: the manufacturer switch. this is obviously a really key bit of the vale/sete story and it is basically impossible to translate to tennis. it's not an equipment change, it's not a coaching change (in any case, I'm committed to jb coaching valentino throughout his dominant era), you can't come up with some hackneyed idea of a tennis academy substituting the manufacturer environment or whatever. tbh I do like how... specific this rivalry is to motogp, like it's one that feels very close to the spirit of the sport... in some ways the valentino rivalry that's the trickiest to translate. on the other end of the spectrum is the casey rivalry which reads as a very tennis-coded situation to me, both practically and thematically. the sete rivalry gets a lot of its charm and appeal from stuff that simply would not work as well outside of motogp

(another important element of the rivalry that for obvious reasons can't be translated is everything to do with safety. sete's rise to prominence happened in the direct aftermath of the tragic death of his teammate, both sete and valentino were central among the riders in pushing through safety-related changes after that, safety concerns play an odd uncertain role in shaping the drama that took place at qatar 2004, sete's lasting objections to valentino's actions at jerez 2005 surround what kind of precedent was set in terms of safe riding. the sete/valentino rivalry thematically asks questions of what people owe to each other, the ethical guidelines of competition, the responsibilities of existing within a competitive community. key questions that remain about qatar 2004 is whether sete was involved in any way in reporting valentino due to a *genuine* earnest interest only in ensuring safety and wanting all riders to take that same step, what the competitive calculus was there, whether he was being naive in that situation, and whether valentino was justified in his cynicism about sete's motivations. there is no equivalent in tennis and it's a case where it's best not to try and shoehorn one in)

so failing a practical equivalent, what you really want is to find something thematically similar. this also really isn't easy. the manufacturer switch on a plot level functions as something valentino does to *intentionally* make his own life harder to prove a point and go his own path. it is an act of individual expression along a path of self-actualisation, for both good and ill. for tennis players this is just... I mean it's too egocentric a sport to have to push back against constraints on your individual identity, right. conformity is enforced more through tennis' stringent norms and underlying conservatism, rather than a literal contract that forms the basis of an athlete's participation in the sport. sure, the general vibe of 2003 where valentino was struggling with feeling like he was just expected to win all the time - where any mild dip in form felt disproportionately challenged and winning had become too routine - does also work in tennis but like... what do you do about that? a coaching switch away from a big name coach is probably the closest equivalent, or turning your back on a bollettieri-type structure. but it just doesn't quite work!! the other controversial thing you can do is scheduling, but given he'll be playing all the masters and slams anyway... idk, turning him into a vulture for a year simply does not have the same vibe. unless you handle it very carefully

so. here is what I think you need to do: you need to give him a target. pick one of the four slams and say that he hasn't won it for a few years (or at all), and then have him organise his season around winning that slam. it's got to be either wimbledon or the us open... I've already earmarked roland garros as his slam because I simply think he has the vibes of a clay grinder... and also this gives him so many southern european courts to terrorise his opponents on. which ig in a mugello-equivalent might give him quite a substantial streak at the place. (though might also be worth giving that streak to rome, as a masters and Serious Business that is also valentino's biggest home event.) for obvious reasons, you cannot organise your season around winning a slam that takes place in january, so australia is out. the case for wimbledon is that in some quarters it's still seen as THE prestigious slam. given that it's quite different from clay, it's easy enough to imagine that being his weakest slam (though it really doesn't have to be, cf borg for the most obvious example), it's notoriously tricky to win the channel slam (rg/wim) given how close they are. the argument against it is... idk, how DO you organise your season around winning wimbledon?? take a vacation during rg? yeah, no. it's gonna have to be new york

the us open is the last slam of the year. it doesn't HAVE to be the most open slam - it was for a while on the men's side, but for instance right now the women's slam that's most open is wimbledon and for the nineties men it was rg - but it does lend itself to that status. players are tired + it's a volatile place that lends itself to upsets. tbh you can even say that valentino's never won it. career slams are tough!! you can be a superb dominant player and struggle with the career slam, again cf federer. sampras never did it. my girl henin also couldn't quite manage it. at this point I think we need to add another plot mechanism into the game: year end rankings. this doesn't quite work as a championship equivalent, since you'd basically always choose a slam over year end number one. but it DOES matter to players, especially if it's either your first one or you're approaching a record. sampras made himself sick with worry when he was closing in on his sixth consecutive year (in retrospect extra worth it since it's a rare record that survived the big three era). and if you don't get it one year... you do have to start the streak again. so valentino is chasing doohan's streak and it's a big thing in the media, maybe because doohan's made a dismissive remark about it or whatever, and valentino is being asked a lot about it. valentino wants to be The number one at the end of every year

one more relevant element of the tennis calendar: surfaces are a big big deal in tennis, slightly less so as time goes by and the surfaces have been homogeneised but they still matter for every single player. both in terms of playstyle they suit and how they make you organise your schedule. an odd quirk of the tennis calendar is that right after wimbledon (grass) you get a bunch of small clay tournaments in europe before you head to north america for the hard court swing that leads up to the us open. now, I personally think this is excellent and whimsical and a lot of fun to watch right after wimbledon at a time of year that just FEELS like it should have clay court tennis, but less enlightened souls than myself see this bit of the year as 'pointless' and 'dumb' and 'nonsensical'. the powers that be are currently trying their best to kill that calendar stretch because the sport hates me personally. it's also not got the best reputation,, like some of my fellow fans do kinda look down on top players who go to those tournaments... at times they are decried as vultures... that being said, some players have a compelling reason to go and play there. swiatek obviously wanted to win her home tournament in warsaw and was bitterly disappointed when she didn't manage to do so in an otherwise dominant 2022, though it's now a bit of a moot point since it's switched to hard court anyway. and thiem infamously had a habit of rocking up at kitzbühel to try and win his home tournament, which might not have been the smartest scheduling choice right ahead of canada, cincy and then uso. notably he won his one slam at the 2020 us open, where tennis had been officially paused until august (albeit with many ill-advised exhibition tournaments, which thiem played A LOT of to prepare for his big run) for pandemic reasons. playing those tournaments can come with a tax for the american hard court swing

and now I think we have just about enough plot mechanisms in place to actually figure out how to make this work. so, here we go. valentino and sete have known each other for years. valentino trained with sete as a teenager at at kenny roberts' academy, back when valentino was an upstart brat who thought he can get away with slicing half his groundstrokes. a little bit further down the road, valentino is starting his first proper pro season and gets some friendly advice from sete about tour life which he completely ignores. let's say it's over-scheduling, a classic sin of the young player. valentino has a tough season or two where he's constantly getting injured as he adjusts to tour life.... he was a very promising junior (dealer's choice whether he won junior slams or not, which are more f2 than 250cc in terms of prestige and... probably even less so, they're also NOT predictive whatsoever of future success, especially on the men's side) but he really does need some time to adapt to the men's game. he's one of those young players who is just cramping ALL the time, something charmingly pathetic about some of his early bo5 efforts. valentino wins his first slam in australia and then he's off. hemmed and hawed about how many slams to give him that year and I've ended up settling on ao/wimbledon for a respectable two, his mugello 2001 equivalent disaster takes place on his strongest surface at rg. for now let's say we have a relatively similar timeline to irl so he has another very dominant season and wins... idk, sure, let's give him three slams. I kinda think denying someone uso is a bit tricky because by that point the discourse gets very calendar slam centric and I also think valentino would suit new york well!! but he's just kinda exhausted, one of those years he ends up withdrawing due to injury. both those years he secures year end number one with ease

during this time his main rivals are kr jr, though he tails off sharply, biaggi, capirossi, barros and ukawa. valentino by this point has a firmly established reputation for long, meandering dramatic matches that he manages to just about win. he's not exactly the most efficient in slam draws (or indeed regular draws) - it's very crowd-pleasing tennis, he's the best out there, but it does come with its drawbacks. his serve is underpowered and his forehand is a reliable rally shot more than it is a great finishing shot. he tends to think his way through matches, often starting slowly as he figures the opponent out, has a lot of wins coming from behind. his biggest strengths are the sheer range of weapons in his arsenal - as well as his brain. it's a nightmare to put him away, which is a great way to torture opponents... how to win matches you have no right to win. while he doesn't win every slam in that period, he DOES have an excellent record in slam finals specifically... hey, you know what, let's give him a perfect record - not too unrealistic, if you look at some of the young big stars currently in the men's and women's game. so when he loses it's earlier in the draw, like fourth round territory ig. but that lack in efficiency in making his way through draws is also something that's pointed out to him relating specifically to his struggles at the us open, at which point of the season the gas tank has a bad tendency to be empty. maybe he even gets fitness-related criticisms, like he isn't training the right way, despite his clear ability to win very long matches repeatedly. it's beginning to grate on him. he's ALSO constantly getting shit for playing the clay summer despite how poor scheduling this is. now, irl this swing happens more in northern bits of europe but... I think we can just about justify a minor alteration here. Let Us Say there's a tournament close to valentino's home that he loves dearly and wants to go to every year. so first you have a 250 in bologna and then a 500 in... idk somewhere else in italy, naples let's say

then, he has a season that's just kind of... frustrating. he wins the australian open quite comfortably, idc what he does at the sunshine dubs, wins rome and hamburg... he has an unexpectedly rough time securing his roland garros title, like we're talking three five set matches and just sort of a nightmare of a grind all the way. one of his matches is against sete, who has had a major change-up in coaching and... fuck it, type of racquet used for something a bit more up to date. this doesn't massively make a difference in modern tennis (actually a bad time to write this given it DID make a different for the ao women's champion) but it's the noughties, it's just about justifiable. sete's new coach is actually someone he (amicably) poached from valentino's team, juan martinez, and they've worked a lot on sete's game. they've buffed up the serve and tightened up his game in general. sete has a quite classic, kind of old-fashioned playstyle. he's got a very flat forehand, super pronounced eastern grip, a one-handed backhand, a lovely slice and good hands at the net. he was a bit of a holdout in the shift of the game away from serve and volley (bit later in the timeline than henman) but he switched away from ONLY using that turn of the century-ish. though it's still a proper weapon in the arsenal - and the thing is you need a very good serve for that to be effective, not just hand skills at the net. sete becomes better at powering through his service games while using a lot of chipped returns to elongate receiving games

now this isn't the type of game that necessarily MASSIVELY suits clay, though if you're able to slice and slide there's a path to competitiveness there. he's spanish, he can slide. and big serve plus forehand won't really hurt you on any surface. let's say they meet in... idk, the fourth round or the quarters, sete isn't seeded massively high even though his results this year have picked up. he's never beaten valentino before - and he doesn't here either, but he makes things REALLY hard for valentino. especially in the first couple sets, valentino's really struggling to get a read on the serve, one of those slightly sneaky ones where the ball toss misleads you about where it's going. (generally if you've got a good eye competing against someone with a reliable ball toss, you can read type of serve from ball toss - slightly to the right for a righty means it's a slice serve and slightly to the left further back means topspin. tennis players have sharp eyes: infamously, agassi always knew where becker was going to serve because becker had a tell depending where his tongue poked out of his mouth. agassi had to occasionally pretend to guess wrong to avoid making it too obvious and only told becker about it years after retirement, who had always been confused about how agassi always seemed to guess right.) valentino's a bit off his game, kinda stressed about being expected to deliver the... idk, first title defence at roland garros? let's keep the timeline vague, he's certainly defending the title. and another super frustrating thing sete does is deploy....................... oh god am I really doing this... okay fuck it, if you're still reading this post then that's really on YOU. so. let's go there

and another super frustrating thing sete does is how he deploys a smart return strategy. now, we've established that valentino's weakness tends to be the bread and butter elements of the game, the offensive clinical stuff on serve and forehand. ideally you would want to exploit those things, and if you are a smart player who isn't just awed into submission by valentino's seemingly endless capacity for problem-solving, there are a few things you could try. first off, if you are a one-handed player who has perhaps had to develop a very good slice backhand ANYWAY to compensate for any weaknesses (particularly defensive) on that wing - and also have that extra bit of power in your dominant arm from not using your non-dominant arm for the backhand - you may also have a very good chipped return. (even for good 1hbh's, returns can be an issue.) (oh also chipped returns - also called blocks - are basically like... you mostly just use the momentum of the opponent's shot to literally block the ball, but the general trajectory of the racquet is from high to low, so like with the slice. puts a different spin on the ball, keeps it low.) so if you were to do a lot of that and keep feeding it into valentino's forehand (given that he's a lefty, this is actually quite nice to do with a backhand return - particularly since his favourite serve is an ad kicker out wide which generally would have a high success rate against 1hbh's) then you are giving him a low ball without a lot of speed. not necessarily the kind of shot your typical counterpuncher wants to be redirecting, which means you keep having rallies on valentino's serve that continually get reset to neutral. valentino unwilling to generate power himself and continually ending up in a normal rally. another supplementary tactic is to actually like... massively step back on the second serve, way more common these days but back then a bit more of a radical approach, and give yourself time on the ball - makes it more likely you can move around your backhand and hit the ball with a forehand instead. and if it's not the best second serve in the world, you sure can take a whack at it

now eventually, valentino does figure this one out. loses the first after a fast start from sete, grabs the second on a tiebreak that FEELS like it should be the turning point, loses the third anyway quite comfortably. at this point valentino goes full lockdown mode and just makes it a complete grind, just utterly disgusting tennis. he will hit high topspin forehands into sete's backhand a million times if he has to. it's not even necessarily winning through brains as much as it is sheer perseverance, until eventually sete's legs fail him and the tennis wavers just enough for valentino to eek out a win. they're very warm at the net, it's one of those 'valiant underdog' efforts at slams where everyone thinks the winner was certain all the time anyway but applauds the underdog (though valentino secretly wasn't so confident throughout the match). valentino and sete are friends by this point, close by the standard of tennis players - they like to train together in italy and have of course spent a few summers together in ibiza... ah I realise I have sacrificed valentino's ability to have meaningful summer holidays to the clay gods. idk they spend the off-season together, whatever. valentino is very complimentary of sete's progress, it's all warm and lovely. he already had one of those kinda silly 'you really shouldn't be in a match this long' situations in the second round.... but after this sete match it feels like he should probably have found his feet, clear through the rest of the draw quite easily. in the end, it's actually more exhausting than that - valentino drops a set to *spins wheel* checa in the semis in pretty unnecessary fashion, and then he ends up in a gruelling five set final against capirossi. a match valentino was in firm control of and then repeatedly in less firm control of. it's just kind of loose and dumb and a bit stupid, fine because he eventually won but probably didn't need to be that close

scholars will note that I've actually given valentino a nicer start to the sete rivalry than he got in real life, seeing as he did actually secure a victory in their first Super Meaningful Duel. as recompense, I'm about to make the rest of his season substantially worse than his actual 2003. I think you can make a version that's more 2003-y by having sete beat valentino in australia and go from there, but I've committed to having valentino lose us open a few times to inject extra stakes into that tournament so... we are giving the early rivalry quite a different vibe here. whatever. now, crucially, valentino doesn't play any warm up events before wimbledon to recover from rg, which didn't cost him last year but DOES this time and he crashes out in the first week. it's his first loss before the third round since he was like twenty one and it's against an opponent he shouldn't be losing to, some scrub idc. sete, remarkably, goes on to win the title, which even after his positive roland garros run comes as a bit of a shock to everyone. it's a big deal, valentino when later asked about it is of course super complimentary, as we've established it's all lovely. valentino goes off to play his home 250 and gets another round of judgement from the journalists, who are already unimpressed by his early wimbledon exit. he rocks up to canada and makes the final... only to lose to sete. valentino struggles extra hard with sete's game on the quick surface and sete steals the match from him in a deciding set tiebreak. this is NOT the sort of match valentino normally loses, ESPECIALLY in a final, he just has this cockroach-like tendency of surviving even the trickiest situations... and sete managed to stand up to him when it mattered most. valentino is once again extremely complimentary of sete, it was a great fight, he had a lot of fun (and he's being earnest, he DOES love the challenge and the battle, these are the matches that make him feel alive)

then he has a bit of a weird cincy where weather-related scheduling issues means he has to play his quarterfinal and semi on the same day, and he ends up losing to biaggi who wins the tournament. by valentino's standards, this is actually a bit of a big title drought - three whole big tournaments without winning one. (obviously this is silly, but so was the three race thing.) journalists think he really needs to stamp his authority again on the tour at the us open, locker room aura etc etc where he doesn't look too beatable. he actually has a reasonably decent campaign and is looking like the clear favourite for the title, until he runs into sete who is somehow in the second week of a slam AGAIN. now, valentino has to lose this match in a slightly stupid fashion. admittedly when I picture losing matches in stupid fashion, my mind typically goes for the REALLY stupid examples like medvedev/tsitsipas rg '21 or foki/rune wim '23... iykyk. but I don't think valentino goes temporarily insane and does an underarm serve and volley. I think he just... fourth set tiebreak coming back from a two set to love deficit, it feels like he's the firm favourite again, if he wins this tiebreak he surely surely goes on to win the match. five all and he plays a really good point to put him in an attacking position, and he tries to be TOO smart and plays the mid court ball in sete's direction, hoping sete would have already started running to the other side of the court - instead, sete has called his bluff, stuck in place and passes him. sets up matchpoint and sete hits an ace. painful, humiliating, dumb way to lose the semi of a slam. never in his career does valentino do such a bad job of hiding how much it stings as here. all the way to the net and in press.... it radiates off him. he's not rude to sete but he does clearly want to die. sete wins the title, which somehow means he's come essentially out of nowhere to win two consecutive slams, and a masters title to boot

the press... oh the press lay into valentino. it's a stupid way to lose a slam and it's the latest defeat in a slam he's never won. is valentino really as smart as he thinks he is question mark. and he really shouldn't be losing to SETE, who never should have been the challenger to the throne but now suddenly looks like he might be the best player in the world. AND serious questions are being asked of valentino's scheduling choices. it's humiliating, it's frustrating, it's a Bit Too Much and sete quite publicly defends valentino but it still stings. valentino takes as much of a break as the scheduling allows post-uso (what's the weather like in ibiza during this time of year huh) and spends it with sete ofc. he dyes his hair and gets grumpy about how everyone wants him to win all the time and doesn't really even seem to care when he does. they criticise how he plays - too undisciplined, too much faff, too many dropshots - and it feels stifling. the year end number one isn't in serious danger this year because of all the non slam points valentino amassed, but it's still not a great feeling. now, in that era the next masters was actually madrid, which might not be a slam but given that it's sete's home tournament does provide an opportunity to give a sort of brno-type bit of payback. they meet in the final again, big hype by this point, and valentino snatches an extremely dramatic victory from the jaws of defeat. lots of long rallies in that deciding set - valentino increasingly managing to exploit how his excellent backhand can stand up to sete's forehand and he can eventually pull the trigger and redirect down the line. valentino still getting criticised for the excessive flourishes to his game, but nobody can argue with how good of a victory it is. they hug very warmly at the net, their speeches to each other are very lovely, crowd supported both of them since spanish vs endless valentino popularity... all lovely vibes. valentino signs off the season flawlessly by winning the paris masters and the atp finals (yeah look he can play on indoor hard too, he's flexible enough to be a bit more aggressive + volley-focused)

now. valentino goes into the off-season with a Plan. he radically rejigs his serving technique with his coach jb, a bunch of technical changes that are tough to spot like... idk man, more vertically explosive, changes the angle at which he draws his racquet back... but also an extremely obvious switch from pinpoint to platform. (goes from drawing his legs together mid-motion to keeping them apart.) fucking about with your technique is normal - this, however, is substantial fucking about to be doing when you are winning 2-3 slams every year. it is the kind of thing that can massively backfire if you've fucked the technique, serves are sensitive, and valentino is clear that he will need some adjustment period. he also does two things that are pretty controversial: make clear he's intending to complete the career slam that year by winning us open AND sign up for his stupid summer clay tournament. he actually DOUBLES DOWN on this choice, going for both bologna and naples rather than just bologna, which is even dumber and more insane scheduling. as a sort of fuck you to everyone who's been telling him he's an idiot

valentino then promptly wins the australian open. he's in a different league from everyone else until the final, including... actually nvm, biaggi takes sete out in the semis since I kinda feel like sete surely has to be seeded number two by now. the final is great, a lot of drama, very tight five setter. valentino doesn't exactly win on the strength of his serve and he's actually kinda struggling with his... *throws dart blindfolded* let's say his lower back by the end of it, to the point where (to nick a plot point from 1989 roland garros R4 chang vs lendl) he ends up serving underarm to catch biaggi off guard at a crucial point. it is an ORDEAL, valentino clearly not at his best. this whole serve thing looks like it might not have been his smartest play. but in all other areas of his game, valentino has kind of doubled down on his specific style - with all the trick shots and junk and awful spins. he wins, it's probably his best major final to date. big relief

that being said, that lower back isn't doing great. valentino has to sit out february, then the sunshine dubs in march, then also monte carlo for good measure. this is to give him a nice healthy deficit in the atp race, aka the question of whether he's going to secure his... nth consecutive year end number one, let's not think too hard about timelines stuff. crucially he wants that streak to go on - it's not as important as the career slam, but it very much matters and now it does look in serious jeopardy. idk, does sete secure the sunshine dubs? kinda asking a lot, but he's racked up a lot of points for sure - so despite winning the australian open, valentino has a lot of work to do. he's not really in a massive amount of danger of LOSING the number one spot early in the year since his post-uso run banked him a LOT of points that only drop off the rankings late in the year. but still. he's a very clear second in the race. first tournament back is rome and he's playing the final in front of his home crowd against sete - it's a very close match, tough to manage for valentino, especially physically after a decent stretch off. the rain bails valentino out by giving him a break in play and when they come back... sete's very good in tricky conditions but valentino's ball is working really well in the heavy clay and valentino scrapes out a win. sete makes a comment later that can be interpreted as ever so slightly shady about how the italian fans must have done a rain dance. also there was like... a small controversy around earlier in the match where the umpire checked the wrong mark of valentino's and called one of his balls out when it was actually in. valentino annoyed because he feels like he's been disproportionately affected by bad umpiring in the past year

valentino also wins hamburg and he AGAIN plays sete at some point in the proceedings. good close match and they're both very complimentary about each other afterwards. and then he wins roland garros and once again has played sete. this match... hm idk what kind of controversy do we want here, let's make it a slightly dodgy medical timeout from valentino at the sharp end of proceedings. that back won't fix itself!! on-court massage etc etc. valentino scrapes past sete once again to win the title. extremely successful injury comeback and the choice to switch the serving technique mostly vindicated, even though valentino otherwise has very much emphasised his individuality. he's playing with more freedom again, he's doing all his silly lil shots, he's not embarrassed at his four hour matches and instead embraces the grind. the battle. sete visibly pissed after this match though they talk it out and it's all good <3 should also be noted that sete is racking up quite a lot of points despite losing eventually to valentino and is still fairly firmly in the lead of the race. lot of talk of valentino losing year end number one, especially if he overextends himself

and at wimbledon, valentino loses a slam final for the first time ever. in a way, it's a Good Effort to get that far - again, no lead-in events. he's picked up an abdominal strain at some point that's also vaguely serve-related. (kinda thinking of a djokovic 2021 ao type situation.) now for obvious reasons, this final has to be lost in a slightly controversial way. my longstanding thesis on the valentino tennis front is that he's one of those people who thinks all kind of mind games and trickery is perfectly a-okay but then suddenly has weird hang ups if someone disregards something tennis etiquette related. I do have a very specific tennis player in mind, and if you're a reasonably long time fan of the sport and its drama you'll probably know what I'm talking about here, but I do love when somebody is, uh,, very..... liberal. in a lot of their approach to etiquette but does seem to take apologising for let cords extremely seriously. now this one is kinda tricky because !! I do feel like sete specifically also generally would be pretty pro etiquette so obviously there has to be an element of ambiguity here. I'm not entirely happy with this as a qatar equivalent, it's not an easy one to figure out, but here's what I've got: quite deep into the match, very tense in a tiebreak, there's a point where valentino is at the net, a lot of faffing about as they chase each other around, and then sete hits valentino in the abdomen. in tennis this is Fine, it literally is not that serious, sometimes you hit an opponent accidentally and sometimes you do it on purpose because it's a good tactic and the most high percentage play. it's even more okay if somebody at the back does it to a volleyer I feel, like it's not a smash from the volleyer at someone standing in the court... maybe valentino was off balance and just a bit slow to react to get the racquet up. obviously it's extra painful and has a more severe effect given what injury he's already carrying (always thought somebody should have given that a shot with djokovic) but it's Fine. except then it looks like sete turns around to receive his towel without apologising, maybe he half indicates with the racquet but not clearly. and valentino is Furious. maybe sete even gives the proper apology hand gesture by the time he's got the towel but by that point it's too late - it set up sete's set point, so that's why sete was a bit distracted and trying to focus on himself.... but valentino doesn't care. mind games, deeply cynical use of the crowd etc etc are one thing, but not properly apologising?? height of unsportsmanlike conduct. valentino also later objects to how enthusiastically sete's coach celebrated the point win

(the reasoning here generally is that motogp is more concerned with ethical violations and tennis more with moral ones. motogp is more about community and doing right by another rider, tennis cares about standards and etiquette and doing right by some sort of abstract code of conduct. ultimately what is being communicated here is an emotional truth - valentino's feeling that sete lacks respect for him, and also will do whatever it takes to win despite pretending to be relatively unaffected by individual matches or the atp race or whatever. I tried thinking of something sete might snitch to the umpire about for a closer equivalent but like... I can't come up with anything that preserves the genuine sense of ambiguity. the other one I was toying with is a double bounce controversy, which... works better for another rivalry because it doesn't feel quite right for *sete* to be the clear offender... like you could maybe have the umpire mistakenly call a double bounce for valentino but idk, you wouldn't really expect another player to intervene there... this version feels more visceral emotionally somehow, in line with the qatar crash)

sete goes on to win the set and also the match against a somewhat physically impaired and also FURIOUS valentino. (incidentally, this physical impairment is later used to undermine sete's accomplishment at this tournament, as I'm sure is true of all three of sete's slams.) cue an extremely horrid vibes trophy ceremony. after mostly blanking sete in-person, valentino airs his grievances in the press conference, where he lays into sete's conduct. it is also rumoured that at some point that evening valentino says that....... um........... sete will never win another tournament again in which valentino is in the draw. okay, look, doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but I think it works well enough. that's all the major tournaments anyway, but saying "sete won't win another slam" isn't curse-y enough and "sete won't win another big tournament* again // *by big tournament we include slams, 1000s and also the year end finals plus olympics, though 250 and 500 tournaments are excluded from consideration" also isn't exactly overflowing with poetry. but if you left out that 'valentino in the draw' proviso... idk irl the curse wasn't a curse in the moment as much as it was a competitive vow. in this universe, valentino could not stop sete from vulturing marseille - so he needs to have a vow he theoretically has the direct power to enforce. anyway. the friendship is OVER. not only does valentino feel slighted, but also this whole ordeal has put sete in a promising position to steal year end number one off valentino, especially if valentino once again fails to secure us open. he could lose his crown. AND according to valentino, sete behaved completely unacceptably [insert heavy implications that he aimed deliberately at valentino to injure him and get the title that way that valentino won't outright SAY but clearly go alongside the dumber etiquette breach stuff]. idk we're aiming for a mix of 'yeah I get why you'd be mad about that' and 'is it really that serious',, quite tricky but that's what I've got

at this point, any sensible person would take as much time as possible to lick their wounds, especially given they promised a career slam. but valentino Shall Not - he made a commitment to his home fans and he's going to honour that. so off he goes to play his stupid dumbass tournaments in bologna and naples. obviously he wins them because the draw really is not all that good, but it's still very... god what is he doing, has he given his abdomen enough time to rest... he then decides to skip canada because we have to draw the line somewhere, luckily for him sete doesn't win that (maybe he withdrew too and valentino only withdrew once he'd heard lol). and then valentino goes to cincy and wins THAT. doesn't play sete who lost fairly early, which has at least somewhat tightened up the race to ye#1. and THEN you get the us open, aka valentino's chance to secure a Major Career Milestone in a year where it looked really unlikely at points he'd come even close to that kind of thing. faces sete in the final obviously. (low key this is super strong season sete's putting together here but the streets won't acknowledge it and will call him a weak era merchant.) valentino drops his obligatory first set and then they're off.... after that epic uso semi of the previous year, valentino has never lost another tight match to sete again. his serve really is better now and trickier to bully. BUT but but crucially... you gotta have that vibe where it's very much a slam run that feels valentino-y... tightening up his offensive game is an alien era character arc - this is counterpunching at its most glorious. and it's really designed to torture sete. every time they're in a neutral rally, it feels like no shot from sete is good enough to escape from valentino's grasp. pure ruthless intent in the amount of high spin valentino plays into sete's backhand. sete never safe from valentino's blistering backhand down the line. dropshots targeted to humiliate - valentino coming up to the ball with a big big takeback, instinctively making sete step back, only for him to slip the racquet into an extremely well disguised dropper. it's a very high quality battle - sete takes the third on a loose valentino service game, before valentino wins a comfortable fourth set. which means sete is serving first in the fifth set - and at *4-5, valentino faces two match points, which he adeptly saves. one with an extremely brave serve and volley. they end up in a deciding set tiebreak (already a thing at the uso back then) and valentino wins to secure his career slam. sete congratulates him but the vibes are frigid

from there on, valentino sees out the race to get year number one with relative ease. now if you've been paying close attention, you've probably noticed that I mentioned madrid taking place after the us open the previous season, which makes for a very obvious jerez 2005 opportunity. and... there's a strong case to be made for making madrid the jerez, I hear it, but... look, to me there's a funnier jerez expy. so let's just take it as read that sete is winning none of these tournaments. sete's fortunes from there are going downhill, he's getting unlucky with various minor injuries that are taking him out of tournaments. and also obviously valentino is beating him every time they face each other - for a while it's always in finals until eventually sete's ranking is allowed to drop a bit. I suppose you could make quite an obvious parallel in terms of valentino only winning the year end finals TWICE in his career,, like with valencia irl. I don't have massively strong feelings about his indoor hard prowess so sure, let's say he struggles with the ultra fast hard they tend to have at the finals. anyway, he secures year end number one, revels in the schadenfreude, also beats sete in the round robin at the finals... it's all extremely satisfying

before we get to the jerez equivalent. I do think it's worth briefly addressing the Vibe of this relationship... it's tough because tennis functions more on the micro level, like you kinda have championship narratives playing out within single *matches*. it's way more about these little moments within sets, games, points, than the macro level I've been focusing on here. I think crucially you have to emphasise that valentino feels like he's under a lot of pressure to perform and that there's never enough winning and that he has to conform to certain expectations wrt scheduling... no fucking about with your canada obligations to play clay 250s at home... and the key thing is that sete really really isn't supposed to be The Challenger. so at a certain point in the 2003-equivalent, it really does feel like people won't be happy unless valentino wins everything. this relationship is a death by a thousand cuts type situation... a lot of very minor infringements, things in matches valentino doesn't like, tonal differences he thinks he detects during practise session. there's a reason why serious rivals in tennis basically always keep their distance from each other - it's an intensely emotional and personal sport and you can't really afford extra complications when you can look the other person in the eyes between every point. tennis matches are long and they are fantastically cruel. you are denying somebody else their dream very, very slowly, with lots of pauses to consider what you're doing

in tennis... tbh, I think there'd be a lot of Discourse about even HAVING a friendship in the first place, like Is It Really Smart For Valentino Rossi To Be This Close To His Rival. slight irony to this of course because in motogp, it's seen as some sort of crime against nature when he DOES get a little bit of distance from his title rivals, but tennis is different!! a sort of williams sisters situation is extremely rare - when tennis rivals at the very highest level get close, they really only do so post-retirement. that kind of rivalry takes its toll. if valentino continues to train with sete during much of this time span... eventually, you're putting a serious amount of strain on that relationship where you're practically begging it to snap. and this young version of valentino isn't exactly experienced at managing these emotions yet either, so he has this increased competitive paranoia and bitterness and frustration and feeling that sete is lying about taking their friendship seriously and doing the Respectful Rivalry schtick and then just... snaps. that wimbledon final kinda makes him unravel and sete only realises until it's too late. it's the us open trophy ceremony where I think you want to lay on the cruelty - this is where, as valentino, if you toe the line very carefully and don't make it TOO obvious, I reckon you could get that new york crowd to laugh at the loser by using your speech. microphone in hand, you can do all your mockery with the pretence of gentle ribbing (and it's very valentino in that he doesn't have to look sete in the eye while doing it) but the humiliation is very real. you can make a spectacle of the cruelty and the uso crowd will help you out. and that specific crowd would adore valentino I reckon

now we're gonna skim over the next season. if I were doing a full valentino in tennis treatment, I'd probably elongate 2001 over two seasons, make valentino a bit older in the 2004 equivalent and then collapse 2005 and 2006 into a single season, partly because I'm getting a bit leery of how many slams I'm having valentino rack up. the 2006 equivalent would be losing the calendar slam at the final hurdle idk. I'm not super wedded to that, I'd have to then actually do the maths and figure out where my suspension of disbelief kicks in with slam numbers/sustained periods of domination. but for now, let's just say that this new season is going great for valentino and not great at all for sete, curse taking more and more effect bla bla bla. now idk maybe making previous year madrid into jerez DOES work better because you have the immediacy of this next defeat as the Final Nail In Sete's Coffin, as something that fucked with sete's confidence and ensured his 2005 was disastrous, but... I would like to make the case for wimbledon. by this point, sete is two time defending champion there. of all the motogp riders, I do feel like sete has the most of a wimbledon vibe, they'd like how well-spoken and classy he is. and... I know the brits were canonically terrors on valentino's behalf slightly later in the timeline, but tennis is a bit of a different crowd and idk,, let's just say they really take to sete. I just think this is a fun one for a jerez equivalent because a) it's a slam final which means both very high stakes and longer match format to work with, and b) it's harder to make the tennis brits jeer but it CAN be done. and as the number one fan of valentino rossi being booed, I just really love the image of the wimbledon crowd booing valentino. I think for this one for maximum devastation you can throw in a two sets to love lead, which in spite of what this current decade might have you believe used to be a very rare lead to overturn in slam finals. making grass sete's strongest surface also means you get a bit of... y'know, this is the last fortress, this is where sete can still properly challenge valentino. and he's really got the crowd going for him, cheering for the underdog etc etc, it's all very smart play and he's clearly gone away and studied everything valentino has done to beat him and has come up with tactics to change that around. this is a guy who puts a lot of thought into his game who has figured out how to challenge valentino in ways in which valentino hadn't been challenged before, and he's still doing that - it's working. wins at least one set super clearly, a 6-1 type gig

and then valentino's brain kicks into motion and he adjusts. he's not beaten sete on grass before and it's clear he's struggling with it, sete way better at compensating for any shortfalls in his game here. grinding is always going to struggle on grass, and unlike some of valentino's opponents sete doesn't faint at the sight of a slice. so what valentino ends up doing is... very risky tennis that prioritises getting further into the court and to the net whenever possible. on the rise shots, chip and charge, ghost in after shots whenever possible. serve and volley! obviously. it's extremely tough to deal with a player suddenly playing a completely different style, to feed you a different kind of ball whenever possible. valentino basically just decides that he's not going to allow the game to be decided at the baseline At All and if he can't go forward, he'll use the dropshot to drag sete forwards. gets a lot of use out of his lob, which he loves. really trying to wrong foot sete whenever possible. sete tries to return valentino's dropshots with his own dropshots and it plays into valentino's hands. those two sets go by fairly quickly too, it's a grass match, these things can go fast... you end up embroiled in a deciding set. now, I think we're going to use a really strong 1-2 punch to properly piss off the brits, who are fully rooting for sete here - and both of these are callbacks to sources of controversy that have previously been mentioned here. first off, I think we should reverse what happened the previous year at wimby as a symbolic bookend, and have valentino fire a ball at sete. now I know I said incidents of shooting a ball at someone are completely okay, but there's... ones that are more okay and ones that are less okay. if you have a lot of time on a smash, one you can aim literally anywhere else rather than an opponent who's clearly already given up on the point - and you still hit your opponent? I mean it's... it's absolutely still a legit tactic but not necessarily ones crowds LOVE. you can't do too many of those before you get a reputation, but if valentino's mostly squeaky clean on that front I reckon he gets away with One. now, obviously, he immediately and with full power of theatre and spite on his side very clearly apologises to sete with his hands. the kind of apology that is very much a fuck you. the brits are unimpressed. then the OTHER thing you bring back is another thing most people these days don't mind but the wrong kind of crowd HATES - the underarm serve. on championship point. he doesn't have an injury justification this time - it's supposed to read as disrespectful. valentino does a really strong job with it, very unexpected, getting a lot of side spin on the ball and drawing sete to the net to lob him one last time. they boo him all the way to the net, where sete has Words with valentino but still shakes his hand

at this point, turning to the crowd, valentino can obviously go for the whole routine. I love love love his canonical jerez 2005 performance because he's got so many of my favourite 'you're being booed' hits in there and it's like,, very spontaneous, it's like watching someone come up with the mona lisa from scratch. you've got the excessive fist pumping at the crowd, you've got the finger to the sky, the hands on hips, the waving, the CLAPPING at the crowd AND the thumbs up... honestly if he'd put his finger to his lips, cupped his ears and beckoned at the crowd to keep going, he would've gotten the full set. I think he already does a lot of that DURING the fifth set because the beauty of tennis is you get a lot of that crowd interaction in-built and valentino would be MADE for that, but I ALSO think he goes full ham after the match. throughout the trophy ceremony, where sete is like. kinda disapproving but is verbally very clean and respectful and just acknowledges the crowd for all their support. and valentino is grinning shamelessly. practically drowning in malice

and yeah after that sete's career basically collapses. though I want to get One more hit in there - a sort of once more with feeling sachsenring 2005 situation, maybe at cincy idk. where you get a reversal of the point with which valentino set up match point at the us open two years previously - valentino attacking sete right where sete is standing and valentino easily passes him. now sete, frazzled, low on confidence, seemingly destined to always fall apart in front of valentino even when he gets close to victory, plays right at valentino, who passes him for the match win. just real studies in despair type shit. incidentally sachsenring 2005 was the last time they ever shared a podium, so in this world it's the last final they ever play. one more brutal defeat, one more disgustingly bad vibes trophy ceremony shared. the rumoured 'curse' is by this point well established urban legend. sete doesn't even manage to win ANY other tournament at any level as his results are just increasingly fucked. this feels super tennis-y tbh. like valentino in general has some very tennis-coded attributes, and an approach to competition that heavily features tormenting rivals until their confidence collapses is absolutely one of them. tennis in general is more like... accepting conceptually that the brain does indeed Matter, maybe because it's just impossible to deny there, whereas with motogp mind games get discussed in a very weird manner as if like. every act in competition isn't a mind game. come on you people. so 'suddenly becoming unable to close tight matches because your confidence is gone' feels very tennis-y. sometimes you fix it sometimes you don't. sete doesn't

in conclusion. um. I do think you have to be prepared to take some liberties with both characters, I'm not saying I think this is a perfect equivalent, I know there's a lot to be critiqued about my qatar 2004 in particular. also, obviously injuries have to some extent be used as a stand-in for like. bike related issues. I know valentino canonically is very blessed on the injury front, but tennis functions kinda differently where... idk they might not be competing with these big dramatic injuries, but they will inevitably have recurring issues they have to work around. AND schedule around. few tennis matches will result in you breaking both ankles, but breaking both ankles precludes you from playing a tennis match. and that's just a fact of competitive life in tennis that you can take advantage of with valentino, in a way that also precludes any serious injuries from taking him out of THE biggest tournaments for any sustained period of time (during his most competitive era anyway)

so. I think what you want to emphasise here is a genuine friendship that gets increasingly warped by the introduction of competitive stakes, and how at a certain point every minor offence can take on an exaggerated meaning in a very tense environment. sete isn't really prepared to deal with this adjustment and isn't prepared to deal with the version of valentino that comes with it. and valentino isn't really prepared either... he's trying to find a way to manage expectations by going his own way and Not conforming, whether he's doing that with his playstyle or with his haircuts or with his scheduling, prioritising matters of the heart + passion over competitive convenience. and then he's facing a challenger who can beat him in a way that HURTS, a guy who wasn't supposed to be his primary challenger and is his FRIEND but is now beating him at the tournaments valentino really cares about and in ways that valentino is generally beating everyone else. somebody who shows that valentino isn't the only clever top player, somebody who actually has a decent stab at outsmarting valentino. it's bruising for the ego and it's tough to stomach from a friend - who is simultaneously super committed to the clean image of the rivalry as something that's very respectful (unlike vale/biaggi), where they can actually talk about their issues rather than have a fistfight

once you get the breaking point, it's basically just an excuse for valentino to separate himself from sete, to finally get the distance he needed. eventually, valentino gets to dig into the full reservoir of mind games with sete. he does this on a competitive level by relishing those exact right situations where sete was getting the better of him, making crucial adjustments to his game and tactics so that suddenly all those tight matches always go in his favour; he figures out where sete is weak and keeps hammering him there. he does this by publicly making fun of sete, knowing that sete is so committed to his civility that he will not respond in kind. he does this by mirroring sete's past offences back at him, and by doing it with a particular malicious relish. this arch dismissiveness to ridicule the idea that sete could ever have hoped to be a sustained rival. it's all about the cruelty of putting sete back in his place. and eventually it gets to a point where it really DOES feel like a curse, where sete can't trust the game valentino has poked so many holes in to work against EVERYONE. injuries eventually make his career tail off. somehow, it feels like valentino is responsible even for that

[mariusmutin]

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Who else loves a good intense practice session ahead of a competition.. @sharanova and @kashirkin_ilya sweating it during the Dutch Camp ahead of the Dutch Open 2019/@the_dutch_open 📺Watch more of the Dutch Open 2019 on Marius Mutin's Youtube Channel. 📺 Next to come, WDC AL World Championships Dublin. Pre-order your videos from the competition and brings back home lifetime memories. DM Me. Do not wait, spots are going away and are limited. For the fans and dance lovers, Subscribe to the YouTube Channel and follow @mariusmutin for exclusiv content! Marius Mutin, Yours, since 2011. By the way, hitting soon the 100 000 subscribers on Youtube and 85 000 000 views, making it the 2nd Dancesport related channel to cross the bar, after @wdsfdancesport .. But making it the first channel to cross the bar as a self made man production. A big thanks already to all of you who followed me, and shared the emotions, that means a lot, a big thanks to the organisers and federations which I worked with, to all of the dancers and teachers, something personnal will come to celebrate it by the end of 2019. Stay tuned. 2020 will take it a step further. READY TO SHOOT 🎥📷📸 Yours, Marius Mutin (at De Bonte Wever Assen) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5apAbmqKVu/?igshid=8njzmvg4p3ob

[torentialtribute]

England’s Cricket World Cup winning side have come so far… now let’s keep going!

English cricket earned its day in the sun with Lord & # 39; s.

Lord & # 39; s was a fitting stage for the perfect day.

In the end, when I walked across the floor for the presentation, it was jumping and no person had moved from their seats. They all wanted Eoin Morgan to lift the trophy and reflect on the most amazing game of cricket they will ever see.

[Engeland]

]

[Engeland] World Cup winning side celebrating their glorious victory at the oval on Monday

<img id = "i-fc77e400f91084a" src = "https : //i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/07/15/21/16087448-7250261-image-a-37_1563223070494.jpg "height =" 449 "width =" 634 "alt =" Eoin Morgan & # 39 ; s party beats New Zealand in a thriller to win their very first Cricket World Cup New Zealand in a thriller to win their very first Cricket World Cup "

Eoin Morgan & # 39; s side beats New Zealand in a thriller to win their very first Cricket World Cup

There has been a lot of negativity around cricket and it sticks, but if you take a step back and think about what's in it he past decade has been reached, then it is not comparable to, say, my generation.

England, remember that the Assen home have not been lost since 2001. They won the World Tw2020 in 2010 and went to the top of the world Test Rating in 2011.

They won the Ashes away Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower in 2010-11, reached another World T20 final in 2016 and now, gloriously, have won the World Cup for the first time after four years of planning and investment in 50-over cricket.

England has world-class players that another country would love. People like Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Jonny Bairstow, Chris Woakes, Jofra Archer and an excellent captain in Eoin Morgan. England, really, are the envy of the world.

<img id = "i-fd92e5db4227148f" src = "https://ift.tt/2SfjtNU 21 / 16043640-7250261-image-a-32_1563222912355.jpg "height =" 437 "width =" 634 "alt =" In the likes of Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow, England has players that another nation would like from Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow, England have players that another nation would like "

In the likes of Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow, England has players who would otherwise love nationwide

Then take a look at the power of Test cricket and how we sell our locations. The success of the ladies game and that beautiful day back to Lord & # 39; s two years when they won the World Cup. I have seen the legacy of that victory at hand because my daughter plays cricket and I see more girls like those who just do and want to play. We should shout about this performance from the rooftops.

It was appropriate that we had Andrew Strauss in the commentary field on Lord & # 39; s because he was the architect of this triumph. It was Strauss who said & # 39; enough is enough & # 39; after the last World Cup and Morgan supported to put things right.

England got the right people at the helm in Morgan and coaches Trevor Bayliss and Paul Farbrace.

Strauss has experienced so much after the loss of Ruth, his wife, and it was wonderful to see him on Sunday. It clearly meant so much to him and he was ultimately an emotional wreck, screaming for every flight.

All-rounder Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer played a crucial role in the incredible super over "

and Jofra Archer played crucial roles in the incredible super about

All-rounder Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer played crucial roles in the incredible super over

This huge improvement since that time has been made possible by the broadcast deals of the past 14 years, which are not only made this possible, but also maintained and even existed for the 18-county healthy system.

When I played, our Essex captain, Keith Fletcher, and Graham Gooch said that he shouldn't hit the balls too often because our Secretary, Peter Edwards, would complain about the cost of buying new ones.]

Yes, I know I am commenting on Sky, but I think this extraordinary extraordinary World Cup win should give everyone the chance to win make up alans, look at what we have and use it as a springboard for more.

It was a great gesture from Sky to offer coverage to Channel 4 on Sunday. But let's not say that the answer to a possible fall in participation levels would be to release all our cricket. The game must be careful what it wishes.

It was Andrew Who said & # 39; enough is enough & # 39; after the last World Cup and Morgan supported Strauss who said & # 39; enough is enough & # 39; after the last World Cup and Morgan supported "

It was Andrew Strauss who said" enough is enough "after the last World Cup and supported Morgan

<img id = "i-78c7759bda336951" src = "https://ift.tt/2NYdz5t" height = "423" width = "634" alt = "England skipper Morgan lets children hold the World Cup trophy on the Oval on Monday

British skipper Morgan lets children the World Cup- holding the trophy on the Oval on Monday Trophy on the oval on Monday

To begin with, terrestrial canals are not exactly lined up for the

Children and teenagers consume their television on different ways, and to be honest, just don't spend hours watching cricket on television like people of my generation did.

Of course there are always areas to work on and of course there is a problem with children who stop playing when they are 16 or 17, there are so many other things that compete for their time. But it is certainly not all doom and gloom and sometimes we all have to remember that.

Sunday was that memory. Let us be thankful for where we are. Let us be thankful for days like Sunday. It requires investment. And let's enjoy.

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[sbknews]

#PerfectComb1nation: Pecco Bagnaia is the 2022 MotoGP World Champion!

The Italian takes the premier class crown after a tense race in Valencia, becoming the first Ducati rider to win the title for 15 years. Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati Lenovo Team) is the 2022 MotoGP™ World Champion! The incredible rollercoaster comeback is complete as the Italian came home in the top ten in Valencia to secure the crown, having overcome a deficit of 91 points back before summer break. Bagnaia is the first Ducati rider to take the crown since Casey Stoner in 2007, the first Italian to achieve the feat since Valentino Rossi in 2009, and first Italian on an Italian bike since Giacomo Agostini in 1972. Born in Turin, Bagnaia enjoyed MiniMoto success before going international onto bigger machinery in the then-CEV in 2011 on a 125, learning his craft before moving up to the Moto3™ World Championship for 2013. Joining the VR46 Riders Academy and then moving to SKY VR46 for 2014, the pieces were in motion before a statement season. On Mahindra at Aspar for 2015, he was the lead rider for the squad and only confirmed that in 2016 as he took the bike’s first ever win – and second. The first was at Assen and the second Sepang, earning him a special treat from the team: the chance to try the MotoGP™ bike in the post-season Valencia test. Bagnaia moved up to Moto2™ in 2017 with the new Sky Racing Team VR46 intermediate class effort and was Rookie of the Year, taking several podiums. In 2018 he then hit the ground running and was a contender for the crown from the off, with imperious form and some incredible wins seeing him take the title in Malaysia. Next stop: MotoGP™. Despite showing impressive speed in his first outings in the premier class in testing, it was a difficult rookie year for Bagnaia at Pramac Racing. Still, a fantastic fourth place in at Phillip Island showed plenty signs of promise. 2020 proved a mixed year for the Italian, but he earned an impressive second place in the San Marino GP and a week later at the same track, he was on the verge of a maiden premier class victory until a heartbreaking crash ended his hopes. He never quite got going again in the remaining races that year, but 2021 saw him move to the factory squad and signalled the start of a whole new chapter. Three podiums and a pole in the opening four rounds signalled the Italian as a title contender and, despite a blip in the middle of the season, he was the last remaining challenger to eventual Champion Fabio Quartararo (Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP™) – and finished the year as the rider with the momentum. From a debut MotoGP™ win at Aragon after an incredible head-to-head with Marc Marquez to an amazing victory in Misano a week after, Bagnaia had arrived and he signed off the season with a win in Valencia, too. 2022, however, began on the back foot. A crash in Qatar, a tough race in Lombok, two fifths and an eighth signalled an unexpected start to the season, but Jerez saw the number 63 back on top in a race-long chess match with Quartararo. Then came another crash, at Le Mans, and then another win at Mugello as the Italian took the spoils on home turf. But the rollercoaster went down again as bad luck saw him take home a zero in Barcelona and a mistake caused the same at the Sachsenring. Then, Bagnaia was 91 points behind points leader Quartararo, the biggest deficit overcome to date. The best way to stage a comeback is to start winning, and Bagnaia did just that as he took an awesome four victories in a row in Assen, Silverstone, Austria and Misano. In Aragon it was second place one year on from his first win, but it was hundredths in it as he duelled it out against 2023 teammate Enea Bastianini. Again. But the rollercoaster was in motion once more at Motegi as Bagnaia slid out on the very last lap – and from right behind key rival Quartararo, losing some ground hard-gained since summer break. Thailand marked a huge challenge as a rainy race day gave many flashbacks of Lombok, where Quartararo has taken a podium and Bagnaia only one single point, but fortunes were reversed at Buriram as Pecco podiumed and El Diablo failed to score. Then came Australia and a crash for Quartararo as Bagnaia once again got back on the box, before a tense, tense first match point at Sepang. There, it was once again Bagnaia vs Bastianini. All race long the two went toe-to-toe, with all eyes on the duo who will share the factory garage next season. But this time it was the number 63 who kept the nerves under control and the upper hand on track, taking his seventh win of the season to pull out a 23-point lead as Quartararo put in an impressive stand with a podium. And so, #TheDecider had arrived. Two riders, 23 points, and one crown. It was a nervy weekend for Bagnaia at times but once the lights went out, the track lit up with an incredible race to sign off an era of Grand Prix racing. Quartararo was pushing to get to the front and it got heated for a few tense, gloves-off laps between the Frenchman and the Ducatis – and a few more – but as the race went on the result seemed set: Quartararo had to win to retain the crown, and win he would not. Bagnaia, having lost some aero in a tangle with the Frenchman, kept it calm but slipped back in the top ten once that became clear – and crossed the line in ninth to crown himself 2022 MotoGP™ World Champion. Complimenti, Pecco! #GoFree and fiesta!

#PerfectComb1nation IN STATS Francesco Bagnaia is the first Italian rider to clinch a premier class world title since Valentino Rossi in 2009. Overall, he is the seventh different Italian rider to do so along with Giacomo Agostini (8), Valentino Rossi (7), Umberto Masetti (2), Libero Liberati (1), Marco Lucchinelli (1) and Franco Uncini (1). Bagnaia’s title is the 21st in the premier class for Italy and the 80th overall in Grand Prix racing. Bagnaia became the second Ducati rider to take the premier class world title along with Casey Stoner in 2007. Aged 25 years and 296 days old, Bagnaia is the oldest rider to clinch his maiden MotoGP™ world title since the introduction of the class in 2002. Nicky Hayden in 2006 is next: 25 years and 91 days old.

Bagnaia is the first Italian rider on an Italian bike to win the premier class title since MotoGP™ Legend Giacomo Agostini in 1972 with MV Agusta. At the 2022 San Marino GP, Bagnaia took a fourth win in four successive GP races, becoming the first ever Ducati rider to do so in any class of GP racing. Since the introduction of MotoGP™ in 2002, Bagnaia became the fourth different rider to take four (or more) wins in four (or more) successive races in the class along with Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Marquez. With 11 premier class wins, all with Ducati, Bagnaia sits in third place on the list of Ducati riders with most wins in the class behind Casey Stoner (23 wins) and Andrea Dovizioso (14). With 20 premier class podiums so far, Bagnaia is the fifth Ducati rider with most podiums in the class, behind Jack Miller (21 podiums). Casey Stoner leads the way with 42 podiums. This season Bagnaia has stood on the MotoGP™ podium more than any other rider (10 times), including seven wins. Only two Ducati riders have scored seven (or more) wins in a single season: Casey Stoner (10 in 2007) and Bagnaia (2022). After the German GP, Bagnaia was sixth in the Championship, 91 points off the leader Fabio Quartararo, meaning this is the best point recovery to take the crown since the introduction of the point scoring system in 1993. Since 2001, there have been only two occasions on which the rider who clinched the title at the end of the year didn’t finish within the top five in the opening race of season: Joan Mir (2020) and Francesco Bagnaia (2022); they both crashed out. Bagnaia also became the first rider to clinch the premier class title despite five DNFs throughout the season. Bagnaia is only the second rider to clinch the premier class world title having previously clinched the Moto2™ title, along with Marc Marquez.

PECCO BAGNAIA How does it feel? "I'm very, very happy because on the day of the worst race of the calendar I've had a special sweet taste When I crossed the finish line and saw my pit board with writing saying I was the World Champion everything was brighter and nicer. My emotion is incredible in this moment. It wasn't easy because after the fight with Fabio I lost a winglet and from that moment everything was a nightmare. I've done lap by lap trying ride defensive lines, but it was very difficult, and it took so long to finish the race. I'm very proud of my team, myself and of what we did because it's incredible." Did you think it was going to be difficult after Germany? "Yeah, like I said one or two races ago, I lost the faith in the championship for one hour after the Sachsenring race but then after that I knew there was still a chance to be World Champion. Sincerely, the work we did this year was incredible. We performed in an incredible way in the second part of the year. We tried to analyze everything, at home also, to see what to improve, why I was crashing and I was making so many mistakes, and from that moment we've just done some incredible. I'm very happy for that because we really deserve this title." Most difficult moment + best moment? "The most difficult was Sachsenring, because I was very competitive like in Le Mans. I was there with a possibility to win the race, but I crashed and in that moment I realised my weak point was that. I was a rider with a lot of ups and downs, with good speed but no consistency. To accept that was not easy. From that moment I recognised I had a problem and I tried to improve myself, also thanks to the people at home that worked with me everything day and helped me a lot. I think I improved myself a lot this season." On Ducati's long wait: "I saw many faces crying, and it was incredible. I was crying too. It was an amazing victory because I was feeling the weight on my shoulders to give back this title to my team, to Ducati, and to Italy. When I spoke to Vale, he said to me yesterday that you have you be proud to have this possibility, not everyone can have the same feeling. It's true that you feel the pressure, you feel anxiety, you feel fear, but you have to be proud of it, be happy to have it, and try to enjoy it. I tried to do it, and today in fact it didn't work but sincerely I'm very happy to think who we have as a mentor and leader.

BIOGRAPHY First Grand Prix: Qatar 2013, Moto3™ First pole position: Silverstone 2016, Moto3™ First podium: Le Mans 2015, Moto3™ First victory: Assen 2016, Moto3™ Grands Prix: 172 Victories: 21 Podiums: 43 Pole positions: 18 Fastest laps: 14 World Championships: Moto2™ (2018), MotoGP™ (2022) For more MotoGP info checkout our dedicated MotoGP News page Or visit the official MotoGP website www.motogp.com Read the full article

[teleindiscreta]

Lorenzo: peor que Rossi en su estreno con Ducati

Fuente original: Lorenzo: peor que Rossi en su estreno con Ducati Puedes ver más visitando Teleindiscreta - Las mejores noticias de actualidad, famosos, salud, belleza, cocina, motor, música y mucho más.

Uno de los muchos alicientes que el Mundial de MotoGP 2017 presentaba allá por el mes de marzo en Qatar, era conocer el rendimiento que Jorge Lorenzo demostraría con la Ducati Desmosedici GP17. Porque el desafío que el piloto balear había decidido emprender esta temporada era mayúsculo.

“Fichar por Ducati es la decisión más difícil de mi vida”. De esta manera definió Lorenzo en abril del 2016, la osadía de dejar Yamaha tras nueve temporadas donde logró tres Mundiales (2010, 2012 y 2015) 44 triunfos, 107 podios, 39 poles y 28 vueltas rápidas, y aterrizar en un equipo como Ducati que acumulaba diez años sin ganar un campeonato.

Ahora, la primera mitad del Mundial de MotoGP 2017 nos deja muchas preguntas por resolver. ¿Cómo se habrá adaptado Jorge Lorenzo a Ducati? ¿Habrá mejorado los registros de Valentino Rossi o Casey Stoner cuando debutaron con la escudería de Borgo Panigale? ¿Quién habrá ganado el duelo entre Andrea Dovizioso y Lorenzo por ser el primer piloto del equipo?

Empecemos el análisis basándonos en hechos. Después de nueve carreras, el pentacampeón se encuentra en la novena posición en el Mundial de pilotos con 65 puntos, 64 puntos menos que el actual líder del campeonato, Marc Márquez, y 58 menos que su compañero de equipo en Ducati, Andrea Dovizioso.

De igual modo, Jorge Lorenzo ha subido una vez al podio (Jerez), mientras que su peor resultado en carrera ha sido una decimoquinta posición en Assen. En Barcelona, el mallorquín logró la primera y única primera fila de parrilla de salida en clasificación, así como en Holanda registró también su peor entrenamiento cronometrado con una decimoprimera posición.

En promedio, Lorenzo ha comenzado las nueve pruebas del Mundial de MotoGP 2017 desde la 11,8 posición y ha cruzado la línea de meta en el 8,4 puesto. Unos registros que no han sido constantes y que se encuentran lejos de las estadísticas de Dovizioso, que en clasificación ha partido desde la 9,3 posición y en carrera ha concluido en el cuarto lugar.

Si miramos más allá del presente, y analizamos y comparamos las estadísticas de Lorenzo con los pilotos debutantes con Ducati durante los primeros nueve Grandes Premios, llevar a cabo un estudio objetivo resulta complicado de ejecutar debido al rendimiento fluctuante de la moto italiana en los últimos años.

Por ejemplo, si examinamos la productividad de Lorenzo con Casey Stoner en 2007, el piloto balear sale claramente perdiendo. Pero si observamos el rédito del balear con Valentino Rossi y Andrea Dovizioso en las temporadas 2011 y 2013, el pentacampeón no se encuentra tan lejos en cuanto a resultados obtenidos.

Probablemente, la equiparación más justa se produzca entre Jorge Lorenzo y Andrea Iannone. Porque en el año 2015, ya que la Desmosedici GP15 era una moto competitiva, pero no al nivel de la Desmosedici GP7 que coronó a Stoner como campeón. Iannone derrota a Lorenzo por 53 puntos, así como en este periodo había anotado dos podios (Qatar e Italia), su peor resultado era una sexta posición y se encontraba tercero en el Mundial de pilotos.

Pero también existen algunas circunstancias atenuantes que justifican esta desigualdad entre el italiano y el español. El piloto de Vasto tuvo dos temporadas para adaptarse a las características de la Ducati en el equipo cliente Pramac, mientras que el de Palma aún se encuentra aclimatándose a la moto italiana. Además, la parrilla de MotoGP ahora es mucho más competitiva que hace dos años, y tener un mal día significa conseguir un resultado más allá del décimo lugar.

Por lo tanto, realizar una comparación imparcial entre Lorenzo y los pilotos debutantes de Ducati resulta difícil de cumplir. Pero si solo comparamos valores, Jorge Lorenzo cae derrotado frente a Stoner, Iannone, Rossi, Loris Capirossi, Dovizioso y Troy Bayliss, mientras que vence a Carlos Checa, Nicky Hayden, Sete Gibernau, Marco Melandri y Cal Crutchlow.

La segunda parte del Mundial de MotoGP 2017 comienza este fin de semana en Brno. Está claro que el pentacampeón necesita más podios y más clasificaciones en primera fila. Pero esto es algo que solamente conseguirá el balear con más kilómetros sobre la Desmosedici GP17. Actuaciones como las de Jerez y Barcelona permiten confiar en que la primera temporada de Lorenzo en Ducati aún sea positiva.

Comparativa Jorge Lorenzo VS Pilotos debutantes con Ducati

Piloto Año Puntos Victorias Podios Mejor resultado Posición Mundial Casey Stoner 2007 185 5 7 1º 1º Andrea Iannone 2015 118 0 2 2º 3º Valentino Rossi 2011 98 0 1 3º 4º Loris Capirossi 2003 96 1 3 1º 4º Andrea Dovizioso 2013 81 0 0 4º 7º Troy Bayliss 2003 79 0 2 3º 5º Jorge Lorenzo 2017 65 0 1 3º 9º Carlos Checa 2005 51 0 0 5º 10º Nicky Hayden 2009 46 0 0 5º 13º Sete Gibernau 2006 44 0 0 4º 13º Marco Melandri 2008 32 0 0 5º 14º Cal Crutchlow 2014 28 0 0 6º 14º

Fuente: AS

La entrada Lorenzo: peor que Rossi en su estreno con Ducati aparece primero en Teleindiscreta.

from Lorenzo: peor que Rossi en su estreno con Ducati

[batsplat]

“the issue was that valentino had thought that he could fix that bike - and while obviously he did influence that project, it was still several years away from being particularly close to being fixed. those two years are all about frustration, of trying to make changes to the bike and nothing working... which was enough to make valentino willing to accept yamaha's terms as long as he could get back to a point where he was competitive again. because he had begun to doubt himself, because after two miserable years of injury, a bike that oscillated between throwing him off and just being slow, the tragedy he and the sport suffered at sepang 2011... well, more than anything else, he just wanted to enjoy himself again”

sorry to copy whole chunks of your work into your inbox and idk if you meant it to sound this way or if it’s an accident but reading this part you could have also been talking about marc’s last years at honda (heartache! my god, my chest twisted) and his switch to ducati and it’s rather interesting… that this happened at almost the same age for them… through almost the same situation………. idk, as different as they sometimes seem, it’s almost like they are meant to be viewed as two versions of the same

(x) maybe a teensy bit on purpose lol

yeah, look, obviously there's plenty of notable differences between the two situations - from how serious the injury was to the personal tragedy valentino went through during that time to the disparity in their ages (three years doesn't sound like a lot but in this sport it kinda is). personally, I didn't really doubt that much that marc could be a title contender again, but from the way he speaks about it, talking during this last presser that he was considering retirement at assen last year... look, some of the stuff early this year was expectation management and of course he's perfectly capable of lying about this stuff, but he very obviously did have some serious doubts about the extent to which he could be competitive again. this is the thing, right... he just hadn't been able to fight at the front of the field for so long, plus he was on a bike that is just ideal for slowly stripping away the confidence of a rider. if you're constantly unexpectedly crashing because you just can't trust the feedback you're getting from the bike, that's just psychologically incredibly tough to deal with (incidentally broadly an accurate description of the ducati during the early 2010s)

which is where the parallels with valentino really do come in, don't they... it's the confidence, the way for the first time in their careers, it's really been systematically stripped down... all this self doubt, the way they're struggling to find themselves again. of course, they'd both gone through rough patches before - the 2006-07 period for valentino, 2015 for marc. they've had a few knocks, it's not as easy to shrug off injuries any more, they know there's no guarantee they'll measure up to the riders they once were. I compiled valentino talking about marc's injury here, but most relevant is how he compares it to his own 2010 injuries. so you have this in july 2020:

I think it's interesting that valentino acknowledges that it helped he knew his title charge was over after the broken leg, to force him to give it up and just focus on his recovery. it's easier, right - if he'd been in marc's situation, it's entirely possible he would've tried to race the following week too. I also think this is an interesting way of framing his actual recovery process, where he *checks notes* still came back way sooner than everyone expected,leading to speculation he didn't really believe his title charge was over - plus kept delaying surgery to the shoulder to the off-season even though it was very obviously hampering him, which then continued to be an issue the following year. like, okay, great job, you didn't try to ride a motogp bike WITH A BROKEN LEG, but also "I only thought about getting better" doesn't quite match up with your actions buddy

as valentino acknowledges, the sport does have a history of near-miraculous comebacks... I feel like these days people only remember 2010 and not the 2017 knock-off

and of course marc's ill-fated decision has to be seen within this context. the ways in which he was influenced by the comebacks from other riders in the past (the most famous of which is probably jorge assen 2013) and by how he himself had a habit of somewhat improbably recovery timelines after constant off-season surgery. from the vale race recs post *wink wink* *nudge nudge*:

valentino also compares his own mugello injury with marc's in september of 2020:

so you also get valentino agreeing with the parallel between honda's situation in 2004 and 2020. of course, the situation in 2004 wasn't as dramatic for honda - but in both cases, they went into that season fully expecting to win that title and instead found themselves underperforming and losing

moving on to comparing the injuries: valentino says his initial injury was worse, but it was marc doing the crazy fast comeback that really fucked him over (which is all true). he talks about why it's so tough... the "physical side" of the pain when you ride the bike but also "on a mental level if you have any fear". how this leaves a "mark on all riders". not particularly hard to draw any parallels here, he's already doing it for us

and lastly in november 2020, again with reference to his own 2010 injury:

talking about how eventually it becomes not just about the career but also about quality of life... how it was a tough period for him because he was just in constant pain... "sometimes you need time"... again, not really much to add, is there. the following years are a brutal double whammy of sorts: not only are you attempting to recover from your worst career injury, not only are there massive reasons why you're suffering (chronic pain, personal tragedy), but also you're suddenly uncompetitive in a way you've never been before in the premier class. you know there's a real possibility your time at the top of the sport is over... that even if you get back on a competitive bike, there's no guarantee you'll be able to come close again to being the rider you once were. you've ridden a bike that's gradually sapped your confidence, your ironclad trust in your own ability to be able to master any bike... you've spent so much time away from the top positions, and you've also made way more high profile mistakes that you had at any stage of your career. for valentino, the most memorable one is obviously jerez 2011 - which, yeah, you can write it off as just a dumb error in the wet, but it's not the kind he'd make if he didn't see this as his one chance to get a big result this early in the season with the crap bike and the crap shoulder (this is 'ambition outweighs talent'). for marc, it's silverstone 2021 (as martin says afterwards, "I hope he can learn from this one and improve for the future", which is great snark lol), portimao last year (y'know, the home crowd booing him)... arguably aragon 2022 the first lap, but that one's not quite as bad a misjudgement (admittedly, he maybe should've called it a day after the first collision). obviously, valentino was never a particularly crash-prone rider until he got on that ducati - but it's worth remembering marc wasn't really known for this kind of error, where he was collecting other riders and causing them both to crash. all of this isn't fun! it's also just kind of humiliating! they're used to so much success, and now they're getting barely any of that - while also occasionally having to go around apologising to other blokes for annoying errors they weren't really making back in the day!

then from marc's end, you've got this quote from 2014 (credit to this post):

of course, knowing marc, there's no way he's not thought about the parallels between his current situation and valentino's back in 2013. and, look, obviously it's not one to one. valentino was three years older back then, his injuries were serious but considerably less so than what marc went through, the competitive landscape looks completely different now than it did in 2013... but this isn't about drawing direct comparisons, it's more about the associated feelings for both of them... all this self doubt, all this pain, the way they just weren't having fun any more... this is the first order of priority, rediscovering the joy. personally I reckon they were being more or less sincere at the start of that journey in not primarily thinking about securing more titles. of course, that changes once they realise they can be competitive again... but while the doubt remains, it's not the main thing they're concerned with

that's the fun thing about qatar 2013, isn't it? there's no point in valentino's entire career where he would have been less invested in whether he ended up winning or losing a fight like that. the whole point wasn't the end result, it's that he was even capable of fighting like that again... of having fun again, battling with a top rider, with the star of tomorrow. given his weekend up to that point, he wouldn't even have been expecting to do so right before the race! really, beating marc in that race was just a bonus. in a different way, the same thing was obviously true of marc: making his debut in the premier class and immediately getting to fight his hero, ending up taking his first ever premier class podium. because of some cruel alchemy of timing and circumstance, you've managed to capture them both at the precise moment where they really are just happy to be there, made their first fight with each other a moment of pure, undiluted ecstasy. such a sweet moment for the pair of them, where they found themselves able to fight each other and had every reason to relish it. you really couldn't have scripted it better

and like you say, they are two versions of the same rider! it really does feel like their careers should be read in conversation with each other! obviously valentino frequently acknowledged this himself early on, saying it wasn't an 'exaggeration' to call marc 'the next valentino rossi'... the ways in which marc had modelled himself after valentino, including of course copying some of his most famous overtakes. beyond their rivalry and conflict, there is also continuity between the pair of them. their entire feud hinges on how it can feel like a blessing to face another version of yourself... but it can also become a curse. the reason why they grew so close in the first place and why things got so ugly between them is fundamentally the same. neither of them have ever really forgotten about the similarities between the pair of them either. mutually inescapable until the end, I fear

incidentally, for context, here's what valentino was actually saying at the end of the ducati years. first of all, he pays casey his dues for being able to succeed on that bike:

you'll note that while he says the experience hadn't broken him (though "I don't think so" isn't particularly firm either), he does talk about how psychologically tough riding that ducati was. also, like I mentioned in the post that this one is a follow-up to, the really big frustration is not even about the riding as much as it is in the utter failure in bike development terms - where nothing they did actually worked:

he describes this as his first wrong career choice (although in other places he has also defended this decision), while also paying credit to his ducati team. crucially it followed on from all these rolls of the dice that had worked, the most major ones being probably the switch to yamaha and later the switch to bridgestones:

he says he's uncertain about whether he'll be able to fight for titles and even race wins again, stressing the importance of the valencia test (which is when he knew he was in serious trouble back in 2010):

and he talks about being the number two rider back at yamaha (while of course flipping it around again to ensure he's putting pressure on jorge):

same principle as with marc, some of this is expectation management and avoiding putting too much pressure on himself, cf marc's constant talk about being content if he could just fight for those 'top five top six positions' again (lol). but crucially valentino didn't know what would be possible

he does also talk a bit about his successors to the seat:

the thing about the ducati during this time, right, is that it was a very bad bike. honda decided to be a bit more dramatic about this post-2020, but these are two broadly analogous cases of massive decline for a manufacturer that had recently won a championship. casey came in for 2007 as a 21 year old insanely talented rider who wasn't too familiar with another bike (certainly not one as friendly as the yamaha) and was able to do something special with that capricious package... but he also talks in his autobiography about how ducati became far too complacent once that title had been won. it's not just mystery illness that explains the progressive decline in his results at ducati during the following three years - it was hubris from ducati, their refusal to listen to their riders while preferring to insinuate their riders simply weren't following the right diet or just weren't exercising enough. valentino switched to this poor package at an age at which adapting to a new bike is just categorically harder, and he failed in making any real progress with that bike for the following two years

that being said, at the end of the day ducati's situation back then isn't a million miles away from what you've seen with the honda - albeit in a different era where this performance decline wasn't punished quite so badly in championship standings because the margins now are a lot slimmer. casey did the equivalent to what marc did in the late 2010s, and put a somewhat evil but obviously fast bike into championship contention for two of his four years at ducati. he jumped ship at the right time, valentino jumped onto it at the wrong time and swiftly realised most of the ship was by this point underwater. look, just some interesting context imo! feel free to ignore. if you're interested in a more in-depth read about what was actually wrong with the bike in 2011, here you go - the short version is "front end feel". which is of course the ideal way to ruin confidence... if you can't trust the feedback you're getting, you can't trust yourself, simple as

[lacharmante]

BMW RS 54, 1954. Source.

One of only 24 examples built by BMW in 1954, this RS 54 was restored to its current condition and configuration by former factory racer Kurt Busch in the mid-1980s. Using the engine, gearbox, and driveshaft from sidecar racer Gustav Pape’s World Championship motorcycle, Busch rebuilt frame number 549010 to its current proper mechanical condition. The RS 54 engine is a masterpiece of engineering. The 500-cc DOHC horizontally opposed two-cylinder engine, driven by transverse shafts and conical gears, is specific to this model. The factory riders Walter Zeller and Georg Meier have each won the Tourist Trophy, and BMW won the sidecar world championship numerous times with machines equipped with the incredible Rennsport engine. In 1998, this RS 54 was ridden by Kees Koster in the Centennial Classic TT in Assen, as homage to his 500-cc championship attempt on a BMW Rennsport. This motorcycle was sold in 2011 to its current owner, who has dutifully maintained and kept the BMW in proper working order. The Rennsport presented here is a splendid machine whose exceptional quality is clearly apparent.

[batsplat]

hi batsplat this is marquezian.. as our resident casey scholar i was wondering if you have casey race recs !!

boy do I ever have recs! here's a (hopefully) fairly comprehensive list, drawing from more or less all the stages of his grand prix career and featuring races notable for a bunch of different reasons

casey is quite defensive of the 'boring' racing of the alien era (in particular the 2010-12 years)... but it is a shame his time in motogp overlapped so heavily with the 800cc era, which did lead to some tough watches for fans of 'overtakes' and 'close racing' and 'unpredictability'. so a lot of these race picks aren't necessarily reflective of how casey racked up the majority of his wins, plus presumably don't always match up with what his own picks would be. but well, whatever! I threw in a few of the ones I know casey likes

warning: the race descriptions generally spoil the results of the races. since this list is pretty long, I've put an asterisk next to the races I'd particularly recommend, and double asterisk next to my personal faves

my tldr spoiler-free top five faves list is catalunya 2007, donington park 2007, laguna seca 2008, sachsenring 2010, and laguna seca 2011. my five next-off most notable/fun races are assen 2004, turkey 2006, qatar 2007, phillip island 2009 and silverstone 2011

and here's the actual list, in chronological order:

sachsenring 2003: first podium in grand prix racing! big disclaimer: the recordings of the 2003 125cc races you can find on the videopass are poor quality and don't feature any commentary, so not the easiest to watch. this race is also not great to follow on the colour front: the three main protagonists are *squints at notes* casey (yellow bike, number 27), perugini (mostly black and white but with a few greenish highlights, 7) and de angelis (mostly green, 15). but well it's a really tight fight that goes until the last corner, good fun... casey's talked about how nervous the track made him so he wasn't racing his opponents hard enough at the end. which is kinda sweet and revealing

brazil 2003: another tight battle, this time with jorge (green/red, 48) and de angelis, another time he doesn't QUITE make it. jorge's first ever victory! y'know the one where he overtakes everyone on the outside and starts the whole x-fuera thing

valencia 2003: first win! 125cc/moto3 racing being reliably good fun is a time-honoured tradition and it can even make that middling karting track exciting to watch. it's a good fight - quite helpfully, casey's nicely visible yellow bike contrasts well with the blue bike (hector barbera, number 80) and the red bike (sic, 58) (at some point steve jenker, 17, shows up on a black and white bike). that being said... the bloody video on the motogp website cuts off around two and a half laps to the end, which is a shame because those laps were (apparently) filled with drama. very close finish, not helped by the spark plug of casey's bike breaking RIGHT before the end, which is a very casey thing to happen to him. he thought he was screwed but ended up being saved by barbera running wide trying to overtake him in the last corner. here's a cute lil feature with casey discussing the race that you can probably just watch instead of the race. also ofc him saying how good it felt to beat the spanish at their home circuit (clip here), king of spite

^look at him in evil gross luminous yellow

**assen 2004: I'll admit, this race is one of my faves in large part because of the terrorism jorge does on casey on the last lap, which casey was NOT happy about. (in a funny coincidence, the same event features jorge's future teammate doing some last lap terrorism on gibernau that gibernau is also decidedly not thrilled about.) featured in the autobiography - he really wasn't a fan of jorge at the time - and when he's being sulky in the interview they have in the post-race broadcast. but another great fight and, with my apologies to casey, the last lap is fantastic. excitingly includes commentary!!

jerez 2006: casey's first motogp race! you don't reallyyyy see enough of him on the broadcast for it to be completely worth it, but it's still a proper good ride. he starts in fifteenth, makes a great start and then gets a lil lucky at the first corner when toni elias attempts to murder barrels into valentino and opens up a gap for casey. gets all the way up to fourth and finishes sixth!! also ofc a starring performance by dani at the front of the race

qatar 2006: second race of the season. after the first race, casey had been ill with a bad fever, plus there'd been a fuck up with the flights that meant he only got to the lusail circuit ten minutes before the first session. he topped the first practise session and qualified on pole, even though he was still recovering from illness and was massively sleep-deprived. his first battle with valentino, eventually drops a few places but still <3 also features some fun vale/nicky hayden battles

*turkey 2006: the third race of the season (look he front-loaded his good races that year) and my girl's first premier class podium!! but... bit of a heartbreaker as he did come VERY very very close to winning. also he said apparently he was pleased with his podium but when he got to parc fermé his team was acting disappointed he didn't win :( still a fantastic race, the highlight of casey's troubled rookie campaign. (casey was fast from the get-go in the premier class, but was dealing with major tyre issues that the team around him didn't do a good job at helping him with. by the end of the season, he ended up acquiring a somewhat unfair reputation for being a crasher, with the lovely nickname 'rolling stoner'. still, for young talent it's generally the peaks that matter most and you could really see his ability shine through here)

*qatar 2007: obviously of Great Narrative Significance, casey's first race with ducati and when he announced his arrival at the top of the sport by getting his first premier class win. good solid fun casey/vale fight, though it does feature the classic 'ducati blasts past everyone down that very long lusail straight' syndrome. people were kinda mean about that - which in turn made casey very irritable, arguing that if your bike is a nightmare to ride everywhere else then it's an accomplishment to be close enough to blast past down the straight. unfortunately I do agree a lil bit with the naysayers in terms of the actual racing, but still a pretty good fight

^the last year it was a day race

**catalunya 2007: probably my personal favourite? (of the ones casey won, anyway.) just something about a great battle at that track - obviously valentino had about a million, but this was really the only race-long one that he lost. important in the context of the 2007 title campaign - even though it was only a ten-point swing - because it showed casey wasn't just about horsepower dominance. fantastic riding from both of them

**donington park 2007: my fave of his wet weather performances because he actually has to work his way through the field. he started fifth but was outside of the top ten early on after an uncharacteristically poor start. fun race with plenty of good shake-ups of the order

(he sealed the title in motegi and won his home race for the first time that year, but since he finished sixth in the former and won the latter by a few lightyears, they don't make the cut)

*qatar 2008: more fun than qatar 2007!! imo!! obviously it's also jorge's first race and he's on pole and dani's a bit injured and those two have their whole thing™️ going on... and vale has just switched tyre suppliers and is trying to prove he's not washed and casey is starting his title defence... so a big significant race for all four of them, and unlike many races in that era has a fair few twists and turns and almost all of them actually get to fight each other a bit. okay eventually it settles down and gets dull but until then it's fun (and there's also some very late excitement involving dovi/vale)

**laguna seca 2008: I feel a wee bit bad for including this one and casey would throw something at me, but well it obviously belongs on here. ignoring casey's complaints for a minute about vale's aggression, it really is a fantastic battle - and vale only goes as far as he does because casey's so good! (also unsure whether casey would appreciate this line of reasoning.) probably the one everyone's most likely to have already watched, and for good reason since it slaps. sorry casey

estoril 2009: only for sentimental reasons, after the first few laps it gets boring fast. still, it's casey's first race back after the mystery illness-induced break, he immediately has a cute lil battle with vale (which he wins, slay) and... okay then it's basically a procession but it's also nice and sweet when it's over and he's on the podium and he's shown everyone he's still got it. maybe skip like. 20 laps

**phillip island 2009: casey's first win in only his second race back!!! warning that it's a little light on actual overtaking but it's still tense and close most of the way through and casey's so great to watch on this circuit. (he's literally too good at it for most of his races there to be all that interesting, this is probably the best one.) plus it's another one included partly for sentimental reasons. here's my pitch:

sepang 2009: so he's been slandered for months, he's been written off, ducati have been fucking him over, he comes back and immediately gets a podium finish and wins the next race... what does he do after that? win again obviously! another neat little wet performance (partly helped by vale having a bit of a shocker off the line lmao, though he seals the title that day with a p3 finish)

valencia 2009: if you want to see the pole sitter crash on the warm up lap and dani almost miss the start in confusion

**sachsenring 2010: vale's first race back after the broken leg. usually that's the time when everyone would pretend to be nice to each other... but all three of vale, jorge and casey had gone to efforts during vale's absence to make things worse <3 anyway cracking race including a good fun spite-fuelled battle between casey and vale for the last podium spot, one of their better scraps with a dramatic ending - after which both of them are charmingly bitchy about each other to the media (see below). shame it was basically their last notable battle in the dry (I didn't include either jerez 2011 or le mans 2012 on this list because I wouldn't really recommend them as good casey races, but they do more or less conclude casey and vale's on-track story. and the latter is also the last podium they share, plus it's the race right after casey announced his retirement. fave presser moment)

^😭😭😭😭😭 you guys are AWFUL oh my god. people always talk about laguna 2008 but the vibes got way more rancid post-2009 when their actual on-track rivalry was basically over

motegi 2010: this one's kinda marginal on whether it qualifies for this list. casey was really proud of this win and felt his 2010 wins were particularly impressive given how much he had to override a bike that was objectively shit by this point.... BUT in practise once he shakes off dovi, it's quite a dominant win and the real fun is watching valentino experiment with whether he can make jorge lorenzo the first person ever to die of rage alone while riding a motorcycle

*silverstone 2011: one of the truly great wet weather performances. this is a personal taste thing - I don't mind dominance as much in the wet because it's just cool sometimes seeing somebody drop a masterclass on the field in those conditions. but obviously not necessarily the most exciting victory fight once he hits the front after like. a lap. still, good battles going on behind him

^a fan of british tracks, not a fan of the british

*sachsenring 2011: great three-way battle with jorge and dani, with the lead exchanged several times - also plenty of other good battles down the order. not one casey emerges victorious from, but definitely one of the best races that season

**laguna seca 2011: okay look corkscrew this corkscrew that but there's an argument to be made that casey makes a pass in this that's better than anything marc and vale can DREAM of. well no I won't go that far - but it's still an incredible overtake, insane thing to do at a blind corner, and casey just looks fantastic riding on that circuit. in his autobiography he says something along the lines of 'oh it looked scary on tv but I knew I'd make it'. which. okay casey!! not gonna say more than that, one of those where you'll know it when you see it. one of the best races of his career and also a key race in that year's title fight

phillip island 2011: marginal inclusion, but it's sweet he sealed the title on his 26th birthday by winning his home race (even though he mainly sealed it there because jorge lost half a finger and couldn't start the race). conditions got treacherous when the rain showed up but well casey stayed on the bike, just about

*jerez 2012: casey's first and last win at jerez! this is the one that casey called his greatest career win at the time and... sure, fair enough, especially given he had a weirdly bad record at the track. he didn't enjoy the experience much because of his arm pump issues, which makes the performance all the more impressive. fun first few laps in particular, after that it's maybe a bit more tension than actual action. still a proper good race

estoril 2012: another win he's very proud of... another one that's maybe even more skewed towards tension than actual action, but still an unmistakably impressive performance given jorge's strong record there and casey's physical issues. that and jerez completed his set as they'd been the races he hadn't won yet, which made him feel more certain of his choice to retire

phillip island 2012: listen it's his last win and it sealed the title (for jorge), so was at least somewhat exciting. but also according to his autobiography, casey deliberately rode slower for a bit before expanding the gap again just to keep his focus up, which I think gives you a sense of how easy he found winning there

^his penultimate race and sixth consecutive victory at phillip island. he also finished on the podium in his last ever race at valencia

[batsplat]

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeqGj4i5YQtD5ou6o6Hyyymq_UAp8LPfQ

Found this playlist on YouTube of MotoGP races with a couple of 125, and 250 races as well as moto2 and moto3. I do have the videopass but because I’m new to watching races and I don’t have time to binge every race of every single season yet so I’m gonna make my way through this playlist and then go back and watch the races I’ve missed another time.

don't think this is a terrible selection - but if you have videopass (or for anyone else, see this post for full seasons 2003-2019), I can give my top few recs for each season 2001-19. note that this is just for motogp - mainly because how much I've watched of the other classes goes from 'signed up expert on every race' for 2006 250cc to 'what' for. idk. 2014 moto3 or whatever. also, this is just off the top of my head, first races that come to mind, don't take this as gospel. top three races each season get an asterisk

2001: suzuka*, jerez, catalunya, assen*, donington, phillip island*

2002: suzuka, jerez, assen*, sachsenring*, sepang*, phillip island, valencia

2003: welkom, le mans, catalunya, sachsenring*, brno*, motegi, phillip island*

2004: welkom*, jerez, mugello*, catalunya, assen, brno, qatar, phillip island*

2005: jerez*, shanghai, catalunya, mugello*, le mans, donington*, sachsenring, brno, qatar

2006: qatar, turkey, mugello*, assen, donington, sachsenring*, sepang*, phillip island, estoril

2007: qatar*, mugello, catalunya*, assen*, estoril, motegi

2008: qatar, catalunya*, donington, sachsenring, laguna*, indy, motegi*, sepang

2009: le mans, mugello, catalunya*, sachsenring*, donington*, phillip island, sepang

2010: jerez, sachsenring*, motegi*, sepang*, phillip island

2011: le mans, silverstone, sachsenring*, laguna*, valencia*

2012: le mans*, sachsenring*, brno*, sepang, valencia

2013: qatar*, assen*, laguna, silverstone*, valencia

2014: qatar*, mugello, catalunya*, silverstone*, misano, phillip island

2015: qatar*, argentina, assen*, silverstone, misano, aragon, phillip island*, sepang

2016: argentina, mugello*, catalunya*, sachsenring, brno*, sepang

2017: le mans, assen*, austria, misano, motegi*, phillip island*, sepang

2018: qatar*, argentina, assen*, brno*, austria, thailand

2019: qatar*, argentina, mugello, austria, silverstone*, misano*, thailand, phillip island

and as ever, if you're looking for a full season to check out - 2004 or 2006 are your friends