#jorge martin also extends his legs to a slightly silly extent at a silly angle but the thing is he has considerably less long legs

[batsplat]

greetings professor batsplat,

i recently heard somewhere about valentino having kicked someone else off the bike before the whole. sepang rosquez situation.

and i was wondering if you had any info on that / could shed light on the context? how it happened, what motivated him to do it perhaps etc.

thanks a lot <33

yeah I know why this gets brought up quite regularly, but tbh there's not much of a story behind it. valentino kicked someone, did not kick said someone 'off' the bike, didn't have complex motivations beyond venting some frustration. just the habitual problem of getting pissy about someone coasting on the racing line (x):

At the end of the 250 class qualifying, Italian Valentino Rossi, annoyed by a move by Yasu Hatakeyama, decided to practice kickboxing. Rossi "pressed" the Japanese rider against the edge of the track with his Aprilia and, bike to bike, threw a kick at the Japanese rider's thigh. The Italian, who had already hit his colleague's helmet at the Dutch GP, did not show the slightest remorse: "Every time I meet Hatakeyama, he closes me down. Today I was on the last lap and I could lower my time, and when I was going to pass him, he crossed the track and slowed down. I had to brake suddenly and I was very nervous. But I think that the next time I am about to pass him, he will not close me down." There were no penalties for Rossi, although both he and the Japanese rider received a verbal warning.

this was at argentina 1998 - here's the kick itself, courtesy of teenage valentino:

here's a HD clip of the kick as well as valentino's gesturing afterwards:

it's basically the exact same thing as casey kicking checa in 2007 or punching de puniet in 2011 (see here) for exactly the same reasons. or for a more recent example, take aleix slapping franky last year. riders are hotheads, they REALLY hate someone getting in their way when they're trying to do a lap, sometimes they lash out. this obviously does not mean it's a good idea and really should warrant some kind of penalty. neither valentino nor casey got penalties, but aleix got a six place grid drop. which, good! it's irresponsible and stupid, even if it's also admittedly kinda funny. still, it'd be pushing it to suggest there's much similarity between that and sepang 2015. although his description of the incident is fun (from oxley's vr files):

I got into a bit of trouble on Saturday for kicking the Japanese rider Yasu Hatakeyama at the end of the final qualifying session. I like to kick arse! I've had a lot of trouble with him all season - you go to pass him in practice and he shuts the door on you, even though he's going slow. I've spoken to him about it a few times and he always says "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" then goes and does it again at another race. It's very dangerous. On Saturday he took a short cut round the back of the circuit, and was going through this corner at about 20kph when I arrived on a very fast lap. It was really frightening, so I paid him back by kicking him as we returned to the pits.

how very casey of him

if you ARE looking for something a bit more relevant in terms of valentino using his body in the heat of battle, an even younger version of valentino might be able to help. this is all the way back in his rookie 1996 season - where he was known for his wild riding, especially in the early races that year, and on occasion did actually elbow AND knee his competitors in his determination to beat them. feral thing. in general, to my eyes valentino seems like he's quite good at using spatial awareness in w2w combat, of using the physical dimensions of his body to fight other riders... take for instance the finely judged knee retraction pass at catalunya 2009, how he immediately sticks his knee out again in front of jorge's line once he's past, that sort of thing

the most obvious example has to be the doctor's dangle - motogp urban legend ofc holds that it started in jerez 2005, where valentino wasn't actually using his leg to block sete, but since then? in popularising the habit of motogp riders of dangling their legs into corners, valentino also gave himself another nifty way of defending against opponents. sometimes it does look like he's using the dangled leg to quite literally block his rivals from passing... perhaps the most blatant examples of that come in motegi 2010, where he's willing to do whatever it takes to beat jorge. he does admittedly have plausible deniability in this race - the possibility that he was dangling his leg more excessively in order to help mitigate the shoulder injury. still, it's pretty comical at times

"When he does go through - if he does go through that corner, he's going to have to take Rossi's leg off!" "He is! Drag him along, I think."

I mean. come on. what is this. you cannot tell me this is ergonomically efficient. valentino did do this to some extent when he was behind jorge too, so I don't think the shoulder explanation is complete bullshit - but it does also feel like a bit of an opportunistic method of making his bike as broad as possible. jorge repeatedly almost rides into valentino's leg, including when he's finally had enough and makes the overtake that sets off the late battle between them. so yeah, valentino's definitely not a stranger in using his physicality to his advantage in conducting his wheel to wheel battles. one of the things that makes him so fun to watch