#tried to write the jorge/vale post and i ran into the stumbling block of 'jorge's life was also like. a mess during this time period'

[batsplat]

As we sat at a table for dinner in Yamaha's hospitality unit at Valencia [2008], where we planned to pick up from where we'd last left his biography, I realised that there was nobody left from the group of people with whom I had worked so closely last time around. There was no Dani Amatriaín, his manager for ten years; no Pere-Gurt, his former director of communications; even his old friend, Dani Palau, wasn't there. They had all made way for a new inner circle, headed by Marcos Hirsch, his physical trainer and now his manager. Héctor Martín, who was signed up by Amatriaín as Jorge's press officer, was now in charge of all his press and PR activities while the renowned lawyer Ramón Sostres, who works for a host of top-level Spanish international footballers, had been hired as his new legal advisor.

Lap by lap Dani [Amatriaín] began to realise he was watching one of them more than the others - a tiny kid who rode differently to everybody else. He didn't know it yet, but what Dani saw from trackside that day was a glimpse into the future. 'More than his speed, he caught my attention by the way he took the corners. It was as if he'd been doing it his whole life - like a professional.' It is now the end of 2007 and he closes his eyes to remember a moment that clearly holds a special place in his memory. You just know that he could describe every second of it. 'I was curious to see who this kid was, so I took the trouble to go to his box.' It was there that Dani would meet one of the key characters in this story - Jorge's father, Chicho Lorenzo. 'I asked him about his rider. I told him he'd caught my attention and I wanted to meet him. His father called him and he came out.' It was love at first sight, although they wouldn't realise that until much later. 'I remember it as if it was yesterday,' continues Dani. 'He was an unusual, curious character. His head was shaved, apart from a Mohican and two stars. His father said, " This is Dani Amatriaín." [Jorge] looked at me with distrust. He had no idea who I was.' But their story together had begun because this little ten year old, with his skill and attitude, had made such a major impact on one of the leading talent-spotters in Spain.

A month after that first meeting Chicho Lorenzo travelled to Barcelona, where Dani was in charge of a school for mechanics called Monlau. While Jorge might not have known at Jerez how important this person was, his father certainly did, and he also knew how crucial his interest could turn out to be. Chicho wanted Jorge to go on competing in the Copa Aprilia but he was in dire financial straits. 'I've brought him this far,' Chicho told Dani. 'From here I don't have the means to take him further. Is there anything we can do?' Sincerity and candour, a Lorenzo trademark. At that time Amatriaín already had ten or eleven riders competing in the CEV, European Championships and Grands Prix. 'I couldn't give him the support he deserved,' recalls Dani. 'It was really difficult for me and I had no choice but to say no.' Lorenzo's fledgling career was on the point of ending before it had begun, but Chicho was not, and is not, the kind of guy who accepts defeat. Dani's words would have been heartbreaking to anybody else, but Chicho refused to leave Barcelona without making one final attempt. As they said goodbye he handed Dani a videotape. 'Please, just watch this. So that you can see how we ride in Mallorca.' With that he left, confident in the knowledge that the sight of Jorge in action would be enough for Dani to take those crushing words back.

Jorge's father, who had seen the reaction his son's riding provoked among bystanders back home in Palma de Mallorca, was not wrong. The first thing Amatriaín did when he arrived home was load the tape into his VCR. His wife had his dinner ready on the table and was angry that he walked straight past it to the video recorder, but Dani's curiosity had got the better of his manners. 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The way he rode, how he slid the bike around. I was surprised by his audacity, his temperament, the way he controlled the bike and the way it was all so natural. He was so small that it was surprising to see him ride like that. And his stare... he already had the stare of a champion.' The video already forms part of Lorenzo legend and is something anybody close to him pinpoints as a key moment in his discovery. The first time I asked Pere Gurt when and how he'd come across Jorge he told me: 'I'll start by telling you about the first time I heard anybody talk about him. Dani told me he'd seen a video of this incredible kid. I remember he told me he'd discovered a bomb waiting to explode - a rough diamond.'

Chicho Lorenzo spotted his son's ability on two wheels when the child was only three and immediately started grooming him for greatness. He removed the brakes from Jorge's bike to force him to learn to stop it by skidding sideways, won him a place with Dani Amatriain, one of Spain's top team managers, and later withdrew him from school early so that the boy could focus on racing.

Dani Amatriaín lives for racing, and his experience and natural instmct for recognising talent drew him instantly to the screen, riveted by the image of a midget riding like a professional. From that day he made Jorge one of his pupils and always had him marked out as one of his favourites. Through Jorge, Dani envisioned the resurrection of an old dream and the quest to fulfil that dream became his life. His deepest professional desire had been to find a kid with raw talent and teach him from scratch - to train him as a rider and as a person, coaching him through every level of competition until that great promise was realised in the form of a great champion. 'I always thought that when I found a rider like that, who had all the natural attributes, everything else could be worked on.'

At Jerez Dani had already seen that this kid was different from the rest and now he could begin to witness it first hand. They would go to a circuit and Dani would take a 600, with Jorge following behind on a 50. 'I was virtually drooling because it was like having a professional behind me. Then I'd let him pass and I'd follow him from behind so that I could watch him and I realised that he'd picked up absolutely everything. He was like a sponge! I had to stop because he was getting faster and faster and I was worried he might hurt himself.'

Chicho Lorenzo had dug a diamond from the mine and delivered it - now it needed an expert jeweller to work on it. Despite his own obvious natural talent for riding and his vast experience, the first reality faced by Amatriaín was that this was going to be a difficult job - as difficult as the character of a World Champion. But Dani wanted to take it on and he committed himself to it with great conviction. Jorge came into his life as a challenge; he showed signs of being a thoroughbred racer and Dani backed him strongly, so convinced of his talent that he gave the youngster his own lucky number, 48. It was the number Amatriaín had always worn when he raced, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a small detail but one designed to tell the world that Jorge was his great hope. Apart from 2007, when Lorenzo sported the number 1 plate as 250cc World Champion, Jorge stuck with 48 in tribute to his sporting father figure until the end of the 2008 season, when he'd brought their professional and personal relationship to an end. Indeed, as will become clear over the course of this book, the fact he discarded that number in favour of 99 for the 2009 season was just as significant a decision as it was to use the number 48 in the first place.

It was an amazing change compared to the Jorge of 2002. That was the year he was introduced to his personal trainer, Marcos Hirsch. They'd arranged to meet in the Flash-Flash restaurant in Barcelona with Dani Amatriaín, who had also been trained by Marcos. Hirsch arrived to find Jorge sitting on a sofa, his feet hovering inches above the floor. 'One day this guy will be a great champion ... if we can sort him out,' declared Dani, with his hand proudly gripping little Jorge's shoulder.

But a split developed between Chicho and Amatriain in 2006, when the latter wanted to fire a sports psychologist favoured by the former. Beset by conflicting advice, Lorenzo stopped winning races in the 250cc world championship and began to crash frequently.

 It was time to make a choice. On one side were his father Chicho, his girlfriend Eva and his psychologist Joaquin Dosil. On the other were his colleagues and friends Dani Amatriaín and Marcos Hirsch. A group of people once united in the Jorge Lorenzo cause had been split down the middle by a clash of criteria. The unusual thing about cases like this is that both parties involved in the conflict had the common objective of Jorge's well-being but the crux of the matter was that there were many different ways to approach and achieve it. The approach, in particular, had to be one that suited the rider, who was no longer a child and needed to make his own decisions about how to solve dilemmas. He needed to make a choice with those closest to him - but who was closest to him? Which side should he go with? [...] The lowest point came, after the French Grand Prix. Dani Amatriaín, the man who had guided him every step of the way since he was ten, was concerned and felt under mounting pressure. He told Jorge: 'I don't want to work with a rider who keeps falling off and is running the risk of hurting himself, seriously hurting himself. Stop for a moment, think, reflect. This cannot continue. I don't want you to kill yourself on the track.'

He had to choose sides – and went with Amatriain. His father demanded money in return for what he had invested in his son, and Lorenzo asked him to keep away from grand prix tracks. The rift continues, although in a subdued form.

So Jorge made the decision to go with his friends. Everybody wanted the best for him, of course, but only Marcos Hirsch and Dani Amatriaín knew how to achieve it. 'I had no choice, I couldn't say no,' remembers Jorge. 'I had to cut myself free from everything. Only they could pull me out of the hole. "If you want to be World Champion, you have to leave everything behind," they told me. "Trust us." It was really hard because I loved my girlfriend like crazy! And my father, too.' [...] On top of the exercises in mental preparation, the relaxation and the late nights in Barcelona, chatting with Jorge to calm him and remove anxiety from his life, an important new rule was introduced into his routine at Mugello. Every Wednesday, when he arrived at the circuit, he would hand over his mobile phones to Dani Amatriaín- and he wouldn't get them back until Monday. There would be no laptop computer either. He would spend the five days of a Grand Prix completely detached from the outside world, where the racket had become so deafening and distracting.

Marcos took me to Las Ramblas Avenue for a walk and we started talking about what we would do. And he told me. "Either you end this whole situation and get rid of your father, Dosil and Eva and you give me your mobiles on Wednesdays when you fly and I'll bring them back to you on Mondays, or I am done with you".

"You have to break up with your girlfriend Eva because your father is using her to send you messages." Enough is enough! Then Dosil disappeared, Chicho disappeared and Eva disappeared.

The following is an extract from an article published in Diario de Mallorca [in 2006] [...] The father of Mallorcan motorcycle racer Jorge Lorenzo has declared war on his manager, Dani Amatriaín. [...] 'I've been left without a job and without a son, because at the moment he is no son of mine. I am hopeful the same thing happens to him that happens to all sons. That he values everything I have done for him,' says Chicho Lorenzo, who says he hasn't spoken to Jorge for eleven days. He also points the finger at Amatriaín: 'He's his manager and the boss of the team, which are two conflicting jobs. As a director he's already taking 20 per cent, plus the percentage he takes as an agent, but it's not about what he earns. I don't know where my son's money is and it is not normal that the parents of a 19-year-old boy don't know that. We don't know what kind of contract he has with Aprilia ... I wish I'd have looked after the money myself. That way I'd know now that it is all for him. The number of cases where an agent has fleeced a sportsman is incalculable.

The 19-year-old rider from Mallorca has released a statement requesting the closure of 'a catalogue of false claims that, regrettably, have been made public’ and respect for his 'private life, with the attention turned to my career as a professional and a sportsman. Anything that happens in my private life will never be allowed to interfere with my career.' The Mallorcan added: 'My life as a sportsman is completely separate and it is, and always will be, directed by a group of professionals who have my complete trust. '

'Daniel Amatriaín brings charges against the father of Jorge Lorenzo' ‘...the kind of personal comments he has made need to be dealt with in court, where I have already appeared in defence of my honour as a person and a professional' The press release goes on to thank 'certain sections of the media for the invitation to contest some of the humiliating accusations about my person and my professional attitude, which have been published recently'.

JL: To be separated from your son after 18 years together, training him... But he brought it on himself because he didn't want me to continue with Dani [Amatriaín]. If he'd have got on better with Dani, he'd still be here now, but that's the way he is. It's all or nothing with him and when he gets really angry you can't calm him down.

Exactly what the pair meant to each other - Dani to Jorge and vice versa - was best described by Jordi Perez, team co-ordinator for Fortuna Aprilia, at the end of 2007. 'Other than his parents, the most important person in Jorge's life has been Dani. He put his life on one side so that Jorge would not want for anything. He gave up everything for him - not in a material sense but in terms of the affection he has shown him. Before giving Jorge bad advice he'd rather take it on himself.'

'The problem with Dani Amatriaín started in 2007,' begins Jorge. 'Things I can't really specify through good manners and because they're in the hands of the courts. But basically I was very worried and I started to talk about it with Marcos in the gym. ‘What am I going to do with my life?' I'd ask him. I must say that I used to talk about it without giving it too much importance and without really thinking seriously about it because I couldn't imagine my future without Dani. But at that time, aside from the personal problem with him, I started to realise how much money I was missing and I started to get angry about it. The first thing that came into my head, because I still had a contract with him and it was out of order to just go up to him and say it was over, was to tell him that I still wanted to continue with him as my manager, because he did a good job with the sponsors, but that from now on I didn't want him to look after my financial affairs because I couldn't trust him. Marcos and I decided to change lawyers and get somebody else to look after the money. We chose Ramon Sostres.'

During the month of September 2008 Jorge's relationship with his lifelong manager, Dani Amatriaín began to splinter. Once again, people associated his problems on the track with his personal circumstances off it, allegations Jorge denies. 'My problems away from the track had nothing to do with my crashes,' he insists. 'From a sentimental point of view I wasn't affected at all by what was happening. I had started to see things I didn't like, strange things, but I had so much confidence in this person that I never imagined the things that were going on could happen. Practically right up until the split, until the final month, I still had complete faith in him. I wasn't worried. The crashes were simply a result of me trying to do more than I could with what I had underneath me rather than my concerns about what was going on around me.' Not everybody who was aware of what was going on at the time subscribes to Jorge's version of it. At the end of the day, we are all human. 'I think that the split with Dani has made Jorge more relaxed,' says Hector Martin. 'In my opinion, the crash at Laguna Seca was related to problems that were going on off the track. I am convinced of it. The ones at China, Le Mans and Catalunya weren't, but Laguna Seca was. There came a moment, 5 September to be exact, when he split from Dani, face to face in Alella, and he changed his "chip". By the tenth of that month, when he was sent a fax from Las Vegas legally confirming the end of their professional relationship, he was completely liberated.'

'We came up with a plan of how we were going to tell Dani,' Jorge starts up again. 'It was after the Czech Grand Prix at Brno. I could tell he didn't like it but he knew that if he got shirty then it was all over, so he half accepted it. In fact, he said that being honest he wasn't sure he could continue being of use to me in the future, "so it is better that we leave it", he told me. But I said no because he was still doing a good job. I told him to be clear that I only wanted a change of lawyer. Unfortunately things showed no sign of improving and I came to the conclusion that I was going to lose all of my money if I didn't hurry up and break up with him. So after Misano we had another meeting and I told him definitively that we weren't going to continue.' Jorge takes a longer pause than the previous one, breaks into a smile and says: 'So I do remember everything, hey? I thought I'd forgotten it all.' He picks up exactly where he left off. 'He knew when I called him for a meeting that I was going to break up because I suppose somebody he knows would have told him. When I saw him speeding up to me in his Porsche I knew not to expect a good reaction. I was scared because I thought he might flip out and try and hit me, or that he might have brought some heavy with him like the one he brought to Misano. I had to go on my own because if Marcos had come it would have got messy. Anyway, surprisingly, he accepted it, he didn't get mad. The crazy thing was that, even though we had officially split up, he travelled to America for the next race at Indianapolis!'

By the tune the Indianapolis GP came around word had spread among the international press that their relationship had ended. However, Dani Amatriaín acted as if nothing had happened. In fact, he invited the Spanish press to dinner and just when they expected him to announce the break-up Dani stood up and thanked everybody for coming. And that was it! Meal over! 'During practice on Friday Dani wanted to make it look as if nothing had happened and he asked if he could stand in the garage for the sake of his image,' recalls Jorge. 'It was pretty heavy because I'd be getting off the bike and going to speak to Ramon Forcada and I could see him there in the box staring at me with this look of intense hate. It made it really difficult for me to concentrate. Hector Martin steps in. 'I was trying to put myself in Jorge's line of vision, to make a screen so that he didn't see Dani. But since the only other person in the garage that knew about it was Lin Jarvis, nobody else understood what was going on.' Jorge continues. 'On the Saturday night of the GP Dani called Hector and asked for a meeting at the hotel. He wanted to make me sign some documents with God knows what on them and I refused to sign anything, obviously. He'd already done the same thing to Hector at the circuit and he'd also been into Carmela Ezpeleta's office and tried stitching him up by asking him to sign something else. It must have been hard for Hector because he doesn't like confrontations, but he had to give him our lawyer's card and tell him that he could no longer speak to us directly - that everything had to go through our lawyer. It made the relationship extremely difficult from that point on, although at least I didn't have to worry about seeing him at the circuits any more because from Valencia 2008 he was [banned] from coming into the paddock.'

'If a man like Valentino Rossi's performances were affected when he had problems with the tax authorities in 2007, how could Jorge's not be?' agrees Javi Ullate. 'What happened to him was like a break-up in a marriage. That would affect anybody.' But the person who was most surprised by what happened, and by Jorge's reaction, despite his vast experience, was Ramon Forcada. 'In real terms he aged a year over the course of 2008 but in terms of maturity he aged a decade. Considering the problems he's had this year he has shown an incredible capacity to shut it all out and concentrate on riding. It was like a thought bypass! Shortly before he would get on the bike you could see that he was troubled, but he would put on his leathers and it was as if he didn't have a care in the world. When the session finished we would chat about what we had to change for the next practice or for the race, and then, you saw the worry creep back onto his face. But he came through it, he rose above it. Indianapolis was the clearest example of that, and the clearest example of him making the bike his own. He had never finished on the podium in a wet race before and he finished third. Plus it would have been second if they hadn't stopped the race!'

Dani Amatriain's team began to dismember some time ago. Brazilian Marcos Hirsch, the driver's physical trainer, acknowledges some disagreements with the manager "two years ago." "I barely have contact with him, but I am like an external collaborator, I am not part of the team or its meetings," says Hirsch, who claims to have found out about the impending Lorenzo-Amatriain divorce "from a Catalan newspaper." "It is now said that Dani was Jorge's discoverer and that is not true; "Jorge's discoverer was his father, Chicho Lorenzo," Hirsch emphasized.

Hirsch: It's also true that he has been unlucky because this period with Amatríain was good on the sporting side... but on the personal side he has suffered a lot.

After there was speculation about the creation of a MotoGP team for Jorge Lorenzo, Dani Amatriain got his pupil to sign for Yamaha, leaving him in the background as the rider's manager. After a very irregular season, in which the first successes in the top category gave way to a carousel of serious falls, Jorge Lorenzo now decides to break with his mentor when he begins to straighten his sporting course after the last two podiums in Italy and USA. Lorenzo, protected by a great team of the stature of Yamaha along with Valentino Rossi, thus breaks with a tutor who was excessively absorbing.

Over the course of 2008, Hector Martin was a first-hand witness to the changes in Jorge's professional and personal life, taking an active role in his development and growth. 'Since the split with Amatriaín he wants to know everything. He gets angry if we don't tell him. He doesn't oversee everything because the wheels are often already in motion, but he wants to know if there's anything going on.' Jorge has taken control of his life and the evidence was there initially in the small details, with his helmet in the final round at Valencia bearing a small inscription that read 'FMT', meaning 'Free Man Team'. For 2009 he changed his number from 48 to 99. The message was clear: Jorge Lorenzo was a free man. 'Now I make the decisions,' he says forcefully. 'I will ask the people around me for advice but I will be free to do what I feel like and what I want. In the past I had my hands tied a bit. A bit no, a lot! Perhaps I could have realised that earlier but life happens the way it happens and the important thing is to react decisively and not to regret the things you can't change.'

In the end I quit with Amatriaín for quite dark and ugly reasons and I started a new adventure... with Marcos as my manager, or as he says, my right-hand person.

So at last Jorge was free, although a lot of things have been left unsaid - 'things that can perhaps be explained in the future or perhaps not, but for the time being they remain in the hands of the judges,' says Jorge. Marcos is keen to pick up the story, but Jorge finishes by adding, 'This year, on the track at least, I didn't think about Dani at all - he never once came into my mind. But when I was at home in Mallorca he called me and threatened me. He told me I was a coward, that I had no balls, that my mother didn't deserve to have such a cowardly son. "I'll get you", things like that. There were a lot of phone calls like that, a lot of messages. The truth is that he's a smart guy and he always knew how to push it to the limit of what is legal, without crossing the line.'

Lorenzo: Perhaps the worst thing, beyond the injuries, was what happened off the track, the whole Amatríain affair... and how he threatened me after I changed to a different manager. It took me a lot of mental strength to cope with that, switch off my private life... head to circuits and ride like nothing had happened.

In December 2008 a judge issued a restraining order and the pressure eased, but Marcos knew what a hard year it had been for Jorge. 'Jorge has forgotten a lot of things because my job was to make him forget them,' he explains. 'In fact, what Dani actually said in those phone calls was much more serious than what he remembers now. I have recordings of all of the phone calls because the lawyers advised me that it would be a good idea to gather as much evidence as possible for the lawsuits. In fact, all of the calls and messages have been transcribed and handed over to a notary for delivery to the court.

We spent the whole year like that — receiving messages, emails, threatening phone calls,' remembers Marcos, 'especially to Jorge, myself and Ramon Sostres, and a few to Hector. We had to cope with it and when Jorge called me all upset and frightened I would tell him to calm down, not to worry. "Let's speak to the lawyers and get them to do something or call the police so that they arrest him!" Jorge would say. The worst thing that happened was one day when we came out of the gym and Jorge was confronted by two heavies standing on either side of his car. There was another standing in the doorway of the hotel and a big black guy riding around the car park on a scooter. We went to get in the car and the guys just stood there, trying to intimidate us. It turns out that that was the day we were going to a meeting with the police in Les Corts [an area of central Barcelona], who I must thank for the impeccable and professional job they did. We set off and we were followed by a car with another guy in it, making out like he was going to ram us from behind. Hector was driving and I was in the passenger seat. I told him, when he had the opportunity, to get into a position where the other car would have to pull up alongside us. At the corner of another street the guy had no choice but to stop on my side of the car. I lowered the window and stared at him. He took off at the next crossroads and we went straight to the police station to inform the inspector in charge of the investigation into our case. After we made our statement we headed back and an unmarked police car followed us, with two of the four agents following our case inside. Sure enough, we head into the hotel and the two thugs are there again, wearing sunglasses, and then Dani Amatrían appears, making out like he's talking on his mobile phone. The agents walk in, ask them for ID and make a note of all of them. That was at the same time that Dani and his gang moved into the hotel. He was there for three or four days trying to join the gym where we train every day but Carles, the owner, told him there was no way because he knew we were training in there and it wasn't a good idea.

After all the bad things I have gone through, deceptions I had suffered with friends and Amatriaín... it will be very difficult for me to trust in anybody 100% again, but I think with the people around me now, I can trust at 99%.

'One Sunday morning I came out of my house to find a knife stuck through a photo of me into the seat of my motorbike,' continues Marcos. 'A few weeks ago he came to my door and stuck up a load of photos of me from an article FHM did about me last year. I know it was him because the guy went and left me a message admitting it! That happened all damn year. I took it to farcical levels to keep everything from affecting Jorge, and above all I tried not to give it too much importance. What else could I do? I know they can come and give me a kicking, stab me, whatever, because Dani spends most of his time planning his revenge against a world that has supposedly turned against him. And who am I? Jorge's manager? Bullshit! I am the person who makes sure his life is free of stress and prevents all this from affecting him when he is on his bike. 'Jorge is like a caged tiger, but if you run your hand over his back he calms down. Jorge has faith in me and when I tell him to forget everything he does it. What I tell him is this: if you appreciate me, if you love me, if you want to thank me for solving problems - all the 'Amatriaín" stuff, the threats we have put up with and all of the knives - if you care about everything that has happened then get on that bike and gas it! Jorge, get on that Yamaha and race! That is how you can pay me back . . . and you owe me! I am the screen that tries to block everything and every blow aimed at you will deflect off my back. Everything else will be decided in court,' Marcos concludes.

The Spanish press is reporting that Dani Amatriain, former manager of MotoGP star Jorge Lorenzo - as well as 125/250GP riders Pol and Alex Espargaro - has been arrested. Sportspaper Marca states that Amatriain was arrested in Barcelona, venue for this weekend's Grand Prix of Catalunya, after making death threats against his former riders. Amatriain [...] is alleged to have demanded money from the riders during early morning phone calls and face to face meetings.

JL: The bad relationship between our managers, Alberto Puig and Dani Amatriaín, has definitely influenced our own [relationship]. I don't think it should ever have been that way because at the end of the day we are the ones getting on the bikes to race and the only things we should be worried about are opening the throttle and giving the thousands of fans watching the race something to enjoy. The fact is that Pedrosa doesn't see it like I do and he has taken sides to the point that it has made any kind of relationship impossible. ER: Are you saying that you have paid the price for the fight between Amatriaín and Puig? JL: I don't think I should have to pay for anything. I think people should show themselves for who they really are and my virtues are that I am honest, I speak the truth, and I accept the consequences of my actions and words. That and the fact I'm not influenced every five minutes by what one person or another says to me. It's like Joan Olivé. Before he was with Puig we knew each other quite well and we used to chat. We're friends again now but when he was with Puig he didn't even look at me! Julito Simon's the same. We used to be friends at the track - I followed his races and he followed mine, and I'd be happy for him when he did well. Since he signed with Alberto Puig he barely says 'Hi'. It's the same with his mechanics, they daren't even chat with other teams. That's the way it is! The same thing happens with Dani Pedrosa. The only time there's been any good feeling between us was at their happiest moment - when they won the 125cc title for the first time. Alberto Puig congratulated me for finishing third in Malaysia and asked how the race had been. They almost seemed like nice people! So in front of of the press I lifted Pedrosa's arm as the champion. It was the only time they have ever seemed prepared to open up to other people.

Jorge Lorenzo confirmed in Assen [2012] his separation from Marcos Hirsch, who until the last race managed the Mallorcan Yamaha rider. Hirsch had looked after the world championship leader's interests for more than 10 years, especially on the physical and mental side and had been fundamental in 2008, the year in which Lorenzo had several falls as soon as he arrived in MotoGP. Here is what the Majorcan said as reported by Motocuatro.com. “As you know, after almost ten years I broke up with Marcos. There wasn't any disagreement or anything like that. The truth is that I was lucky enough to work with three key people in my career, three people who helped me a lot, the first was my father, then Dani Amatriaín and finally Marcos. They helped shape me into a better person and driver. Marcos helped me a lot physically and mentally. We have been a very good team in recent years. He has handled large contracts. But now I felt I had to change something, what I had was not enough to take a further step. Mark was a manager of course, he was a manager who came for other reasons, he helped me a lot when I had personal and professional problems in 2008 but now I don't think he is the person who can make me grow again. Albert Valera is now my new representative. He will help me in relations with the sponsors and I hope that everything goes well to ensure that he becomes an even more complete driver."

Jorge Lorenzo’s former team manager Dani Amatriain has returned to racing, and formed  “Team 99” with the help of his former rider [in 2013]. The “Team 99” will compete in the Spanish 80cc cup, and will field three young Spanish riders; Gino Navarro, Alex Toledo and Iker Vera in this seasons series. The former manager who has managed the likes of Jorge Lorenzo, Emilio Alzamora and Pol Espargaro to name a few, but the Spaniard broke away from Lorenzo and motorcycle racing back in 2008, and has since suffered personal problems. But he is now back where he is at his best, scouting at “grassroots” level of two wheeled racing. In a statement released today by Amatriain, he said; “The project is encouraging, these are very young riders with a great future ahead and I should emphasise that the collaboration with Jorge Lorenzo, with whom we share many happy moments from the beginning, when he was only 10 years old, and I am proud and grateful for. It’s a major challenge to move all my experience to these kids, after having gone through some very delicate moments and thankfully I can say that I am fully recovered.”

Regarding the rivalry between two great legends like Dani and Jorge, [Puig says] “There are these situations in life where you have to do something like that and then you do it.” “Maybe they even took him out of the professional field at the time, but I recently spoke with Dani Amatriain. He defended his interests, I defended mine. At that time there was less 'good-nature' than now. It was tougher, but there was less hypocrisy. Today, many people think things, but they don't say them so as not to stray from what is right or wrong."

In an interview given to the Tot Es Mou program on TV3, Jorge Lorenzo's first manager admitted that he entered the world of drug use during his time as a representative: “While I was competing I didn't use. As I began to develop more of a role as a businessman and representative, towards the end, due to the environment, friendships, I began to play with this. And this is so dangerous that it led me to total disaster.”

In his book, Amatriaín recounts chapter by chapter the phases of his addiction, matching them with the people and moments in his life in which they were happening. His eleven years with Jorge Lorenzo and his subsequent stage in the Barcelona nightlife after his painful breakup caused the most fragile moment of his life. A harsh story, although seen from the distance of time and without delving into each of those traumatic moments, which serves to convey how cocaine took away everything from him: "My family, my friends and, although it is not the most important thing for me, also reputation, money and social position.” "My decline until I hit rock bottom was straight out of a movie. When Jorge informed me of our separation and his intention not to attend to the resolution of the contract, I fell into the clutches of drugs absolutely," he says in his book. "I learned that when you have a problem, a lot of people disappear and you are left completely alone," he says.

Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Amatriaín

Tech 3 Yamaha A Certainty For 2008 (2007); War Of Words, Episode I: Lorenzo vs Pedrosa (2008); Lorenzo the Spartan of speed (2008); Jorge Lorenzo prescinde de su tutor, Dani Amatriain (2008); Jorge Lorenzo threatened by former manager? (2009); Jorge Lorenzo: My Story So Far (2010); Jorge (2010) MotoGP: Jorge Lorenzo confirms his "divorce" from Marcos Hirsch (2012); Dani Amatriain returns to racing (2013); Lorenzo's discoverer sees him back on the Ducati (2020); Alberto Puig: “Then everything was much harder, there was less hypocrisy” (2022); Dani Amatriaín, el manager que encumbró a Lorenzo, revela la grave enfermedad que padece (2024); Dani Amatriaín, el histórico manager que encumbró a Lorenzo: "La adicción tomó las riendas de mi vida" (2024)