MotoGP Editorial: Quixotic Fate
Michael Scott | November 13, 2013
So that’s how it goes. After a year of rising and falling tension, it’s all decided in one race. That’s how it should be in sport. But what does it mean for the future?
Maybe that what everyone expects will be a long and dominant reign by the boy-wonder Marc Marquez will not be quite so untroubled.
Without doubt throughout 2013 we have been watching the changing of the guard. Valentino Rossi has been watching it too, without a great deal of comfort. Fourth place – hmmmm. Likewise Dani Pedrosa, consigned to the far end of this year’s eternal triangle. Both are looking at the wrong end of their careers.
The revelation of 2013, however, has not been Marquez. Or at least not after the first handful of races, when his speed, aggression and rostrum consistency had already been underlined by a first MotoGP win. Became normal.
Jorge Lorenzo is surely the man of the year, for all sorts of reasons. Most of them the very essence of the vainglory that makes motorcycle racing so wonderful. An ostensibly pointless – even childish – game of “I can go faster than you can,” which makes it somehow worthwhile (and worth millions) to develop skills and take risks just to get back where you started from.
I’m not questioning this. I’m applauding it. And noting the Don Quixote element indivisible from this Spanish struggle.
Quixote is famous for tilting at windmills – charging the whirling sails with lance held ready, on his war-horse Rocinante. Never mind his delusions and muddled mind. The persistence in the face of almost certain defeat is what fits the Lorenzo model.
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