IT’S WHAT WE TURN UP
for or what we slump in front of the telly for: the hope that the championship battle will go down to the wire. Months of racing, untold millions of investment, more blood, sweat and tears than most men can stand and that queasy sense of vertigo as the season builds with dizzying crescendo. And then
time I’ve only ever witnessed
saloon. The 2006 Rossi-Hayden That’s quite a wait to feel that giddiness as the television seems to switch to slow-motion, the adrenaline kicks in and you feel ever so slightly sick.
In 1989 it was American legends Wayne Rainey and Eddie Lawson at Goiania, a racetrack carved out of the blood-red earth of deepest Brazil and bathed in steamy tropical heat. This was a high-noon showdown: two Californian kids, who had grown up together, thrashing their dirt trackers round the parking lot of the local motor speedway, now duking it out for biking’s biggest gong.
Arguably, Goiania wasn’t the right place for such a momentous encounter. While Rainey and Lawson adjusted their race faces, other factory riders turned up for practice, hiding raging hangovers behind blackout shades. The city of Goiania was GP racing’s Sodom and Gomorrah – a misbehaviour. Those who were there still talk about it, recalling the days when the GP paddock knew how to have fun; which might be the real reason I felt queasy as Lawson, Rainey and Kevin Schwantz gunned it was the victor that day and defeat hurt Rainey so much that the pair didn’t talk for years.
Rainey had his day, of course; several, in fact. In September chasing a world title hat-trick. This time things were very different. Mick Doohan had been running away with the title until he broke his right leg at Assen. While the Aussie’s shattered limb rotted away in hospital, Rainey ate away at his points lead until he was just two behind as they lined up at Kyalami. Doohan could barely walk; Rainey closing in on his prey like a ravenous lion going after a wounded gazelle. The crown went to Rainey by four points. I remember walking into Doohan’s Mighty Mick has an inner strength beyond the ken of most humans, but I’ve never seen the man look so crushed.
It was another 14 years before we got to see anything like that again. The Rossi-Hayden headto-head was a classic, because it confounded expectations. Rossi arrived at Valencia with an eight-point lead. Surely the title was his for the taking. But Hayden bet his life on this one race and seemed emboldened by the sense of occasion. He drank in every moment of the weekend, fully aware that he would still be feeling the buzz on his deathbed, win or lose. row, Hayden on the second. Things didn’t look good for Kentucky. Then everything changed during the charge found Rossi in his way, but didn’t roll off or swerve off line, he just kept on keeping on, throttle pinned, his right elbow ramming the reigning champ’s left butt cheek. That was the moment I started to believe that Hayden might do it. And he did. Rossi panicked as his rival forged ahead. The Italian’s ignominious fate was to teeter over the brink at a 80-kmph hairpin. Hayden was
One such day in 19 years would seem a good argument for BSB’s showdown format, round cliff-hanger every time via a complex rewriting of the points system that I can’t even be bothered to understand. I think it’s a bit like awarding double the football season. Nonsense, in other words. I’d rather have a genuine showdown once every two decades that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.