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batsplat · 9 days

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more thoughts? PLEASE

okay I'm gonna assume this is about my tags on the sete post and well when I was editing I cut out a lot from a bunch of different sections so there's not necessarily... uh. this isn't going to be a coherent addition. but I have a few more thoughts I might as well rattle through

1. reinvention

idk I just enjoy what he's doing with his style changes during that time... like in 2002, 2003 and 2004 you've got a different vibe going on each year. the whole point of that brno hair colour thing was that it was almost a step back into the past, of re-embracing the fun and the whimsy and escaping the constraints and pressures of the present. very much embracing a more youthful vibe when you compare it to 2002, getting back in touch with his inner teenager, all while he's plotting his crazy move to yamaha. and then 2004 obviously he inevitably changes up his colour scheme, but he also lets his hair grow out and it ends up nicely emphasising that this is a New Era for him. not really an original point but there's just something fun and playful to how he uses his cute lil visual storytelling elements, from the hairstyles to the celebrations... he makes it fun to analyse him, y'know? always thinking about The Narrative

2. the symbolism of it all

this bit was too vibes-based to make it into the post but it's basically linked to these bits in the conclusion:

and following on from the reinvention thing, I do think there's something narratively rich to how valentino had to change his approach as a result of the switch to yamaha. you have this... I wouldn't call it a regression necessarily but maybe a recapturing of this playfulness in the middle of 2003 with the whole brno thing, but then there's something a little tougher and hardened about him in his yamaha days that kind of comes from necessity because he just didn't have that margin for error anymore. from the mat oxley reference book:

Some racers think motorcycle racing is a high-speed ballet, others think it's a petrolhead's wrestling match. Valentino always had the killer instinct, but it's significant that he only became known as a warrior rider after he left Honda. Without the technical advantage of the RC211V, he needed to find another way to beat rivals. He found that way at the 2005 Spanish GP, where he battered into Sete Gibernau at the final corner to win the race. He used similarly aggressive tactics to beat Casey Stoner at Laguna Seca in 2008 and Jorge Lorenzo at Motegi in 2010, and to deal with Marc Marquez during 2015. It has been said that Vale invented this kind of racing, although a deeper look into the sport's history reveals that this isn't true. And yet there's no doubt that he loved the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the kill.

and yeah, crucially, he did always have it in him. he was a proper menace in his rookie 125cc season, to the surprise of absolutely no one. but it's a very valentino thing, isn't it... you've got this clown prince persona, you have this exuberance and joie de vivre and all of it, and it's not like any of that is a lie. it's also not like his friendliness to other people is a lie either: the anecdotes about this are pretty consistent in telling you about how he does take genuine interest in his fellow human beings, which is hardly something you can take for granted with the kind of socially isolated egomaniacs competitive sports tends to produce. (though he does also benefit in that regard from coming up through an era in which the sport was still a little less professionalised and he was afforded somewhat more time to develop into a generally more well-rounded character, not a bad thing lbr.) but then, back against the wall, the fangs come out. and in a way that's what the entire 2004 season was about for him - this period where he was actually facing real challenges, a period of transition and transformation where the winning was a little less easy and he changed as a competitor as a result of that

and there's just something... idk, fitting, about how it was sete specifically who ended up being the victim of this, the guy who had always been seen as a little too carefree and nice and soft to cut it at the sharp end of the sport. who valentino had befriended: he'd been happy to blur that line between competitor and friend back then, though obviously that friendship started before sete became a serious threat. if you really want to go off the deep end with this, you could say valentino ended up exorcising the softness within himself by crushing sete. he wasn't going to allow any weakness in his own competitive make up, not when it could actually cost him. and in a way he really did have to understand sete really well, to know how to get to him in the way he did, to know how to play all those little moments in front of the cameras... those moments where he's cold to sete and knows it will unsettle sete, where he extends his hand and knows sete will accept, all of it. targeted cruelty, based on a thorough understanding of sete's character. again, this is a bit of a reach but you could say the two feuds where he went the furthest with his cruelty were against the two blokes who were the most similar to valentino. and, well, sometimes you do have to understand someone to truly know how best to hurt them

the whole episode also ended up signalling something to his competitors, almost like a warning. it's not like his relationship with everyone else in the paddock changed from one day to the next and he still had good friendships with other guys after that - even those he was actually competing against, like nicky hayden or loris capirossi. but inevitably, it will have also shifted perceptions of valentino. after the feud with biaggi you could say he was really young and also a lot of people had problems with biaggi. but gibernau? if you need concrete evidence people took notice of valentino's behaviour, take casey in 2007 saying to valentino that he didn't want their relationship deteriorate the same way it had with biaggi/gibernau. one feud can happen to everyone, two starts looking a little suspicious - three was where it became a pattern

3. rivalries

y'know, I've seen that casey quote about valentino and gibernau and biaggi thrown around a fair few places over the years, but the thing I've always been kind of curious about is what valentino thought about casey telling him that. if this is a pattern of behaviour, then what's happening there is valentino being confronted with that pattern, right? I think an underlying question you have to address at some point with valentino and his rivalries is how aware he is of what he's doing. like, is he consciously engineering feuds or is he doing it subconsciously? and I think it can be a bit misleading if the first valentino feud you come across is the marc one, because it'll prime you to read all the other ones in certain ways that might not be entirely accurate. I've not quite figured out how to express this yet so bear with me here - but marc is the one who valentino felt the most hurt by and continues to feel the most hurt by and as a result it's the most emotionally charged feud from his perspective. but what that also means is it's the feud where he's the least consciously aware of how he himself has contributed to this whole nightmare situation they've got going on. because from his perspective he did treat marc differently from... well, basically from any post-sete major or even minor rival. he offered marc all that kindness and generosity and good will and graciousness in defeat as well as victory and had it thrown in his face

which makes it easy to assume this is all just... well, not just twenty years of feuding but also twenty years of self-delusion. and it's not quite like that - he has more self-awareness than that I think. when you read how he talks about biaggi in his autobiography (who he is kind enough not to completely erase from his narrative), even in 2005 he seems to have a pretty good handle on what that feud really was. okay, maybe he does somewhat shirk responsibility and somewhat overemphasises the role of the media as opposed to his own malice, but there's an awareness of how stupid and silly and mean-spirited the whole thing was. it was just a kind of nasty rivalry with a guy valentino didn't like much - but who, for what it's worth, wasn't exactly going out of his way to be nice to valentino either. sure, it ended up being torture for biaggi, and sure valentino did maybe relish inflicting said torture a little more than is morally appropriate. but y'know, in some ways, it's quite straightforward, this honest mutual dislike. uncomplicated, even

and this I did not include in the actual sete post because it's just complete and utter speculation, but I wonder to what extent the sete experience did end up changing valentino's approach to his competitors. whether he deliberately embraced that side of himself a little more and was a little more considered and calculating in how he treated his rivals, more in touch with his inner bastard, if you will. even if he just had in the back of his mind that something like with sete could happen again, even if he was just a bit more careful about keeping certain blokes at arm's length. because, remember, from his perspective this was also the first time a relationship with a rival deteriorated this drastically - now you can say 'yeah but it was his fault', but that doesn't change how it was a new experience for valentino too! he was also learning stuff about himself in the process, going through an important journey of self-exploration, etc etc. love crushing my enemies on the path to self-actualisation

and valentino did learn a lot from that whole experience on-track, he did learn useful skills in terms of managing rivalries - so maybe he also looked at what worked on sete in the psychological warfare department and, y'know, consciously made a note of it. when casey delivered that little spiel to valentino about not wanting their relationship to deteriorate, I assume valentino responded perfectly pleasantly in the moment... but I do also think he was extremely ready to deliberately sour their dynamic if he had to. zero self-delusion required

he's quite calculating with casey and jorge I feel... especially with casey, he really didn't waste his time feeling emotionally slighted or coming up with reasons why casey was the devil and needed to be destroyed. he wanted to destroy casey because he wanted to win, and was comfortable enough in his own skin to use the full bag of tools and tricks to do so, no complex internal narratives to justify the whole thing needed. for him, that was all just part of the game. it wasn't for casey, which is a topic for an entirely different post, but... well, casey and jorge in particular are the ones who have spoken about this valentino desire to create enemies, to give himself someone to hate etc. and in a way, ironically I would say they're the two for who that was the least true. yeah, they gave him a helpful target and he was perfectly happy to whip up drama where needed. but I don't really think he was going to any particular lengths to invent reasons to hate them (even his 2010 dramatics were really just faffing about). he found them both kinda annoying and he wanted to beat them. that's it

4. these photos of valentino and sete at sepang 2004

idk I just like photos that have nebulously bad vibes if you know the context. it would have been quite funny if they'd consistently used the same shade of yellow in sepang press conferences over the years

5. marc

all of the stuff above does to me really emphasise how... god. this is the thing about valentino and marc, right, as a tragic narrative - it feels inevitable in many ways that this had to somehow go wrong, but then at the same time the exact way in which it did end up going wrong was reliant on so many things playing out the exact way in which they did, that it feels like if you could have just slightly changed things... like, let's say for a moment my baseless speculation about valentino is correct and he did become a little more careful and deliberate in how he approached his relationships with his competitors after the sete experience. there's so much that had to come together for him to lower his guard around marc to the extent that he did. again, injuries, ducati, how he wasn't really competitive in 2013, how dominant marc was especially in the first half of 2014... all these things that came together to lull them both into this false sense of security, spurred on by genuine interpersonal chemistry - all of which allowed them to even become friends in the first place

think about what the early marc and valentino relationship looks like if you're casey (who, bless him, certainly wasn't paying close enough attention to motogp to be aware of 'press conference vibes') or jorge (who, bless him, was unfortunately unable to avoid said press conference vibes). isn't there a little part of you that goes 'what the fuck is all this then' when you see valentino act like marc is god's gift to motorcycle racing after spending years enacting elaborate hazing rituals any time particularly promising talent had come through? casey's little 'yeah he was fucking with me in practise in 2006' line, jorge... okay in valentino's defence, it's worth pointing out that their 2008 relationship was more cordial than literally anyone had expected, and things only really soured in 2010. but still, their camps did already start up a healthy habit of sniping at each other in the press in 2009 and they did have the whole cold war cosplay situation going on, so. jorge certainly wasn't being given the kid gloves treatment

and sure, 2014 was a pretty drama free year for everyone because the general consensus was 'what would be the point', and I suppose if you're jorge you might also just assume the old man's washed and has gone soft in his advanced age. but still! I think I'd be a tad peeved myself, especially given valentino immediately fell into a lovely little habit of taking marc's side in controversies from the very start of marc's rookie season. but that's kind of the point - valentino's entire approach to marc required that past history of feuding for him to fall back on, for him to imitate/echo when the moment arrived (as I talked about here)... but it also required valentino to have gotten enough distance from all of his past misadventures for him to not have that sort of mindset from the outset when it came to marc

which, another thing I feel like maybe can get obscured a little if you're looking back on past rivalries with the marc-lens - this concept of valentino 'switching up' towards his opponents. because I do actually think there is something categorically different between the sete + marc rivalries when compared to any of his other ones - and it's how deliberate that switch-up is from valentino's perspective, vs to what extent it's driven by 'genuine' emotion. I just think there were rivalries (for a given value of the word if we're including melandri here) between sete's era and marc's era where valentino decided he was going to create a little distance there - but it was all part of the game. he didn't hate those guys. he just wanted to win, and understood as much about himself

but he does hate marc, because that rivalry was never supposed to be like the other ones. which, in the end, is what made it far far worse

6. che spettacolo

'he was so happy after sealing his first yamaha title :)' I go, knowing he had just pulled off a pretty fucking nasty spite win against a bloke he'd recently put a curse on. he really did risk quite a lot in the penultimate round of the season, just because he could not bear to see sete win that race. revealing, isn't it? obviously he'd always try to win the race, but... at times he just couldn't help himself in how far he went

anyway, it's my favourite of his title-winning shirts. a deliberate departure from tradition - he told his team he didn't want logos or any other decoration or even any mention that he was world champion again. the reasoning he gave was that nobody would expect it from him, which... well, yeah, it's what that whole year was about, wasn't it? about doing the unexpected, about proving everyone wrong - and, in the end, about putting on a show. like all the best valentino celebrations, it gets the message across and explains to you quite clearly what he thinks the story of his victory was. memorable in its simplicity but tells you everything you need to know

one of his career highlights <3 it's in character that the whole thing was just a little bit evil

7. film

I cannot for the life of me remember when this was except it was post-2015, but one time in a presser valentino was asked which rivalry of his he'd make into a movie and his answer was biaggi. obviously it's hard to argue with the dramatic appeal of that particular story and it's certainly got a lot of very memorable moments, but my hot take is that the sete rivalry has got it beat by virtue of having a far clearer narrative arc. it's a slightly unusual, slightly odd story for a sports rivalry... like I said in the sete post, people aren't typically all that compelled by sports rivalries where you know from the outset which one of them is better. what's the point then, right? very much the indie flavour rivalry, a little more niche and philosophical and inscrutable and, y'know, darker. this is a feud that centres around a curse, after all. this one's for the girls who get it etc etc

valentino's erasure of sete is interesting for a lot of reasons, but it's a shame because it really is such a good narrative arc that adds so much to the transition to yamaha. the transformation valentino himself went through as a competitor, how he responded to real threats emerging, revealing your true nature in extremis and all of that... I'm not entirely convinced by how sete says valentino didn't need to do what he did against sete - he said it specifically about jerez, which I suppose is debatable, but I imagine he meant it more broadly too. there was a moment valentino could have lost that 2004 championship. and he'd already decided he would do anything to stop that from happening, which things like that assen last lap nicely symbolised. the thing about judging valentino for the foibles and the spite and the dishonesty and the competitive paranoia and all of it - well, at the end of the day they are key aspects of his make up as a competitor for a reason. you can judge him as a person... but as an athlete, more often than not they worked out in his favour. that's what's so interesting about sepang 2015 in a way - it's the only time the whole thing well and truly backfired

(I know casey has drawn the comparison between himself and marc before and argued valentino's biggest mistake was in making enemies but... well. was it? it wasn't against casey - valentino did not lose anything by making an enemy out of casey and he very well may have gained a lot, depending on what your read of the 2008 season is. very much a topic for another post... but this is the thing right, I think it's perfectly reasonable to object to valentino's behaviour on moral grounds, less reasonable to ignore why it was such a big part of who he was as a competitor and how it helped him succeed. I completely understand why casey wants to draw that comparison, but - perhaps unfortunately - it's a little too nice to be true that valentino's malice cost him as much as casey suggests it did)

valentino learns a lot from the sete rivalry in terms of his storytelling and self-mythologisation, not least in how he plays up the theatre of the sepang presser. one aspect that really stands out to me is the pointed cruelty of his celebrations after sepang. from the sete post:

revisiting his whole 'character arc' from the 2003-05 period here, you've got this reversion in 2003, right, this throwback to the antics of his teenage years, and then you've got him getting meaner in 2004... and these things are married here. the whimsy and fun inherent to his celebrations is being wielded in the name of humiliating his competitors, of making a joke out of them. there's this thin line between joy and malice, where throughout his career he seems so endlessly capable of both - even at the same time, clearly. he's obviously already shown himself capable of mocking his opponents in the biaggi days, but, I don't know, it really does feel like there's something to how deliberately the humiliation is incorporated into the theatre of victory here. what a spectacle indeed

8. rage and panic

but then again, I really don't want to pretend like valentino is perfectly rational or calculating in what he's doing here. remember where all this started - in qatar, a race where he well and truly lost his cool and he knows as much. I included the relevant autobiography section in this post, but just to put the bit here that's bit about qatar itself:

he knows his brain fucked him over! I also think it's interesting that this reads slightly differently from his immediate post-race quotes, which I included in the sete post:

was he angry or was he relaxed or, somehow, both? was that unfortunate moment of relaxation caused by the inevitable letdown from the anger - was it unsustainable to ride like that? either way, the key bit to me is the heightened emotions involved and how usually he has it under control, usually he can use all of this in his own interest to spur himself on... except when he can't. as I pointed out in the tags of the qatar post, there are elements of that race that do remind you of another 25 year old rider who had received a penalty he felt was unfair and was working his way through the field while running hot on emotion. it's all fun and games and smiling assassins etc etc, but if you get them really angry...

and, y'know, in a way there's an element of panic to his post-qatar media rampage. okay, sure, he was clearly furious and the whole thing did end up working out in his favour, but in the moment he must have also been scared he was going to end up losing a championship he'd thought he basically had wrapped up. it's funny because if motogp were a sane and normal sport, valentino (allegedly) vowing his title rival would never win a race again on live tv should have been a moment of foolishness and hubris and should have been remembered as such. it should have been him losing it for a moment there and saying a bunch of stuff he'd need to gloss over and hope everyone moves on quickly from. it is absolutely bonkers that it all played out the way it did post-qatar and it just like... all went in his favour. it could not have gone better for him. there's a world in which 2004 is remembered as the title valentino squandered. but sometimes hubris gets rewarded, I suppose

9. margin

sane and normal sport, huh? the thing about sports is that none of it is sane and normal. if you actually go through the races one by one and look at all the instances sete could have won a race post-qatar, it does feel just incredibly improbable that sete never won a single one of those damn things. I mean, there are five races where he's literally going into the last lap(!!) with a chance of winning. (in the name of journalistic integrity I do have to point out sete's fuel ran out in the last lap of brno so he didn't really have a chance of winning, but that just brings us back to the 'does motogp exist in a parallel universe where black magic is real' question.) in three of them, sete is ahead of valentino at some point of that final lap

one of the worst things about sports is that sometimes it can trick you into thinking the final outcome is in doubt when it actually kind of isn't. the fact that these two blokes are arriving at the last lap together fools you into thinking that both of them have a decent shot of winning. but obviously it doesn't actually work like that. call it skill and the extra margin of error a decisive performance edge will provide you, call it a clutch factor, call it how 'broken' sete was - it really was just the illusion of proximity, the illusion of tight margins. maybe it really was a test of wills. in two of those races, valentino risked quite a lot to win. phillip island for obvious title arithmetic reasons, jerez because he's literally throwing his bike against sete's in his desperation to prevent sete from beating him. in some ways, it feels unfair to judge sete's mentality too harshly - firstly because this is an insane person sport and I do think he has a point when he says it's maybe not a great idea to laud crash-happy riders for their 'bravery', and secondly because he was just fundamentally the worse rider, which obviously means it was always going to be harder for him to beat valentino than vice versa. but, and this is without any judgement, sete's problem was that valentino always would have been willing to go further than him in his desire to win. to be good at the insane person sport... you do unfortunately have to be insane

10. momentum

I'm not going to be able to do this justice here so I'll only address it very briefly. but I've referred quite a few times to what valentino 'learned' from those years and the sete rivalry and how it helped him acquire tricks he'd be able to use for his other rivals in the future, and there's one aspect of this that kind of stands out to me. you know this bit, right:

this is the thing to me, he becomes so much more proficient at managing momentum. take his 2001 season, he was just kinda doing stuff... panicked a little bit when he had a bad race at the sachsenring until jb talked him off the ledge and reminded him that neither him nor the bike were all that great there. poor thing. and then 2002 and 2003 didn't really have title fights, though I guess 2003 did have a mid-season turning point of sorts when valentino just decided he'd had enough of losing races. which is a nice thing to be able to do, I suppose

but yeah, obviously I already addressed at length how valentino did his whole show at sepang to stop sete's momentum cold, and then how he fatally undermined sete's self-belief and hope and conviction in jerez a few races later - basically stopping that title bid before it even got started. which is all well and good, but... okay, how do you actually manage to make your three most famous overtakes so meaningful? obviously the cause and effect relationship is a bit muddled here - just because they're his most famous overtakes, they're not necessarily his best, and we remember them particularly strongly because they had such a strong impact on his fortunes. but still, when you think about it... sepang was only a turning point that season because of the theatre and not because of the race itself, his overtake in jerez was 100% last minute desperation... but laguna and catalunya? he literally could not have scripted those races more perfectly

both happen at a time when he really, really needs a big win. in 2008, he might have had the points on his side but he sure didn't have the momentum, with casey's three consecutive wins on a ducati that finally seemed well-settled enough to fight for the title and with a lot of strong casey tracks to come. like, he basically wasn't the title favourite any more going into that race - even at the end of laguna one of the commentators still referred to casey as "the man to beat" for the rest of the season. in 2009, the situation was similarly dire. from here (I say like I'm citing something more substantial than my own tumblr posts):

they were both races that valentino went into at a time when he was in serious trouble - but on the flip side they also presented a serious opportunity. both laguna (a race casey must have felt completely certain he would win) and catalunya (jorge's home race) were ones where he could really hurt his rivals. at some point that weekend, whether before the race for casey or before the final corner for jorge, both of them would have been 100% confident they'd win... and valentino stole those victories from right under their noses. and the thing is, right, he couldn't have planned exactly how those races went. first of all because, contrary to whatever the italian public may believe, he is not literally a god. and second of all, the specific overtakes everyone remembers are also ones that inherently had a lot of risk attached to them you'd obviously prefer to avoid. at laguna you have the excursion into the dirt where he needed skill and also quite frankly luck to not crash. catalunya was a last corner overtake - and as we've established, valentino by this point had learned his lesson about leaving it that late if he had any choice in the matter

still, it's not like it was just fate or coincidence or any of that. obviously, he did get lucky that these races unfolded in such a perfect manner for him... but athletes do have a hand in creating their own luck. for laguna, and this is so very much a topic for another post, valentino deliberately deployed tactics to fuck with casey in a way that ended up generating that overtake - without getting into it too much, he basically knew he couldn't allow casey to be ahead going into turn 10 (the corkscrew's turn 8). so if you've decided in advance that come what may, you'll stick your bike in front of your rival's bike in a certain corner... well, if you get lucky, then maybe you can create a little magic. with catalunya, he said afterwards that he'd been imagining that overtake for the whole week before the race. incidentally, according to the commentators jorge had told them that if you're ahead going into the last two corners, you've won the race (which is obviously the kind of thing you should never say, are you insane??) - and that's the key, isn't it. here too, there's a meeting of skill and luck and jorge maybe not being as diligent in protecting the inside line as he should have been (a fact that casey, always polite, full of tact, ever helpful, was willing to repeatedly point out to jorge) and it could have very much ended up with two bikes in the dirt and some awkward conversations within yamaha that evening... but still, at the end of the day, you've got to "invent something" as the commentators put it, you've got to come up with that move and decide it's possible and visualise it again and again before eventually turning it into reality. both of those wins and both of the overtakes everyone remembers were at least to some extent built on tactics and prior planning and valentino deliberately producing something special when he really needed to

the other key bit is, okay, obviously it's not that remarkable that valentino immediately clocked they were important wins, given he'd intended them to be important wins going into the respective races and he knew full well how dramatic the duels had been... but he was still very adept at leaning into the theatre of it all. the idea that valentino came up with the idea of kissing the corkscrew during the race is very funny to me, but it is pretty plausible given he will have had time to do so while coasting at the front after casey's fall. and it's just very memorable, isn't it? sure, that corkscrew overtake helped him win the race, but so did the first lap move into turn 8 or that nifty move on the outside of turn 3 on the lap casey went down. the battle still continued for another twenty odd laps after that corkscrew overtake, but valentino had the shrewd showman's acumen to immediately pinpoint that as the moment of the race, the thing everyone would remember, the defining image, and paid tribute to it in his celebrations to ensure the association would stick in everyone's minds

obviously, he also goes for all kinds of over the top celebrations in catalunya, including wildly ecstatic fist pumping on the bike and breaking out of parc fermé to soak up the adulation of jorge's home fans and all that stuff. and he's a huge fan of the fact he got his 99th career win beating the number 99, because of course he is

also obviously he does that annoying thing where he goes up to both of them while they're doing their interviews so their reactions will be recorded for posterity. so yeah, that's the thing, right... it's about knowing immediately the wins are special and meaningful and signalling with your overblown celebrations how meaningful they are to everyone else so that everyone else is extra sure to remember them and talk about them forever and ever... obviously he got lucky here, obviously it's a little crazy that both those races worked out that well from his perspective. but, y'know. got to hand it to him, I guess. something pretty neat about how both times he went 'yes I am going to change the momentum of the season today'... and he did. plus you've got to give him credit for the fact that he actually capitalised on his momentum, which isn't always easy, and basically took control of both seasons from that point onward (if in different ways and to different extents). he knew he had to take advantage of how his rivals were on the back foot after his daring victories, and he did. you could almost say, right, he knew he had to bite harder when his opponent was already bleedi- *gunshot rings out*

bonus: valencia

so the thing about this whole 'back to back wins with different manufacturers' business is that, understandably, everyone focuses on the welkom side of the equation. very spectacular, very unlikely win, really shouldn't have been possible and somehow valentino did it anyway. but, y'know, that other side of the equation is noteworthy in its own right! he really was crap at valencia. eighth place in his 1999 250cc campaign, his worst result all year when he finished the race (1 dnf that season)... his 2000 title campaign died there when he crashed... eleventh place in 2001, his worst result all year when he finished the race (1 dnf)... in 2002, he got second place there, one of only five races that season he didn't win

but he really, really wanted to win that race in valencia. now, personally, my assumption has always been it was kind of supposed to be a 'fuck you' to honda, which I still completely believe btw. but this is how he himself frames it:

I was the one who worried. Saturday night I took pictures of myself hugging and embracing the RC211V. I wanted to say goodbye to my bike because I knew that tomorrow we would race our last race together. Leaving the RC211V was what hurt most. In fact, I now believe the reason it took me so long to say yes to Yamaha was because I was so attached to that bike. As I looked at the RC211V and thought that we would soon be separated, I genuinely feared that it would take a very long time before I once again tasted victory. That's why I decided I had to win that last race of the 2003 season. It would be a great way of saying goodbye of course, but also I wanted to stock up on victories, I wanted to have the taste of triumph fresh in mind because who knew when I would win again with Yamaha?

which, okay, setting aside for a minute what a freak he is about these bloody bikes, there's two underlying reasons he expresses here for why he's so desperate to win this race. first of all, yes, he really loves that bike and wants to give it the farewell their partnership deserves. and second of all, more poignantly (for the non-bike fuckers anyway), he really did not know when he'd win again. I don't know, it's something that stuck with me... I think we can talk all we like about how big a risk it was and what a step into the unknown it was and nobody believed he could do what he did etc etc, but to me this is just the most straightforward way of capturing that uncertainty. valentino wanting to remember the taste of victory, because he knew he might be giving it up for a long time. he loves winning so, so much, he's done so much over the years to win, he's never been able to stop chasing the high... and yet he walked away from that bike

"I decided I had to win that last race" is in itself funny because obviously a lot of people can't just 'decide' to win races. which, yes, it's just a thing people say, but it does capture the essence of that type of valentino win where it feels like he's won it through sheer force of will. a lot of the times, these are his spite wins - the phillip island 2004's and jerez 2005's of this world - hey, speaking of sete duels, we should include le mans and sachsenring and brno and qatar 2005 as well. various biaggi wins, perhaps most memorably the middle finger race in suzuka 2001 and his last lap overtake in phillip island 2001, where he won his first premier class title. when he beats spaniards in dramatic battles at catalunya like 2004, 2005, 2009, 2016. his fury at his penalty at phillip island 2003 that results in that spectacular fifteen second margin over the field. his desire to fuck with jorge in motegi/sepang 2010. let's throw in his dominant win in jerez 2016 in enemy territory, the first race win he'd had of that nature since... oof, let me have a think, maybe assen 2009? (incidentally, the race that directly followed catalunya.) like, man, this is not how he was winning races post-prime, it was always one hell of a struggle - with one glaring exception

which makes it worth pointing out that the second and indeed last time he won in valencia was in 2004, when he was in the process of dismantling sete. now, given sete ended up finishing fourth, it wasn't strictly necessary to get the win to ensure the curse continued doing its thing. but, y'know, there was a point where sete was in front of valentino on-track. then sete tries to overtake biaggi, pretty firmly it has to be said, and pushes them both wide allowing valentino to sweep right on through, which I found pretty funny icl. anyway, the best way to ensure your rival doesn't win a race is to win it yourself, right? after the frustration of qatar, he reacted by winning the last three races of the season spurred on by sheer spite. no wonder he took notes and learned a little something about how to best motivate himself

bonus 2: things that aged badly

october 2003, mind you. he really got those guys good

bonus 3: dovi

I mean, come on. it is a little bit funny that both valentino and marc acquire a new rival at age 24 seemingly out of nowhere who was their main rival for three years. (I don't care what the championship standings say, marco melandri was not valentino's main rival in 2005 - sete might have been extremely cursed but those were still The Battles that year.) said rival was 6-7 years older than them, known for being a particularly smart rider and a wet weather specialist, and announced themselves as a major threat in large part through winning two dramatic last lap duels against the all time great in the first year of that rivalry. both rivalries were (well, initially in valentino's case) notable for being significantly warmer on an interpersonal level than the ATG's previous major rivalry

both had previously been hrc riders but had been fired by the team. gibernau had one premier class win before 2003, dovi had two before 2017, and all three of those wins came in the wet. ofc dovi did have a bit more pedigree - the 125cc title, stronger results in the premier class, considerably more podiums. but both dovi and gibernau weren't really supposed to be the main rival to the ATG, not even within their own team - though, obviously, the reasons why they ended up assuming that mantle couldn't have been more different. with both of them, people said they'd changed their approach to riding, mainly in terms of their mentality - and that it had helped them grow into their new role as the primary challenger

there's not really a point here... I just think it's neat. obviously it is a little funny how differently those respective relationships unfolded, but I also wouldn't say it's fair to entirely pin that on the personalities involved, as opposed to circumstantial factors. that being said

#valentino rossi #//#vr46 #sg15 #this post is very much just throwing stuff at the wall. lightly edited brainstorming from my notes #heartwarming: tumblr user proves they are capable of editing their essay-length posts by showing way worse was possible #no wonder I answer asks at a snail's pace... sorry if you've sent me something. may take a while

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