Michael Scott | October 27, 2021
Cycle News In The Paddock
COLUMN
Too Good But Too Human—The Ozymandias Factor
We’ve seen and heard plenty about the tide of youth, the changing of the guard, the new order in racing, etc.
With good reason, and in all three MotoGP classes, precocious youth is rampant, new names crowd the podiums, and class rookies lead the tables in both Moto2 and Moto3. And while premier-class champion elect Quartararo isn’t exactly a beginner, he is only in his third MotoGP season, and he is only 22.
The same thing is true in World Superbikes, where the inevitably somewhat sterile dominance of Jonathan Rea and his Kawasaki is under serious threat from young Turk Toprak Razgatlioglu, 34 years old to just turned 25.
Maybe it’s time to think not about the rise of the new, but the end of the old. The uncomfortable and sometimes even devastating fate that awaits the once dominant. A lesson in life—the Ozymandias factor.
Oz of that salutary classic poem about downfall and inevitability: “Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair.”
Rea hasn’t yet lost the Superbike title, of course, but the omens with one round left are not good, the way his season has gone. Too many uncharacteristic errors and non-finishes alien to his usual stately progress, and a loss of composure that has seen him appear recently apparently close to tears. Razgatlioglu’s morale, by contrast, is bubbling over.
This fate always awaits the super-talented. In their prime, it all comes easily. But when the tide turns, instead of being swept onwards and upwards by exceptional talent, they become hostage to it.
Too good to be beaten, too human to win forever.
Thus, a historic parade of greatness eclipsed. Geoff Duke was finally undone by the fresher and more adventurous riding techniques of John Surtees. Mike Hailwood escaped while still on top, but Agostini was undone by time and circumstances.
Maybe it’s time to think not about the rise of the new, but the end of the old.
In a perverse way, it is almost lucky to be taken out by force majeure. Mick Doohan for one never had to face the gradual erosion of his superiority, the undermining of his overweening strength. Nor Wayne Rainey. But career-ending injuries imposed a higher price of their own.
Other past masters managed it philosophically: Eddie Lawson a prime example, enjoying his twilight years shepherding Cagiva to eventual maturity.
More recent history brings us Rossi, once basically just unbeatable. For the past 10 years, however, the decline has been slow but unstoppable. It’s hard to imagine a rider resisting the decay with quite so much determination, and the results have only recently undergone a catastrophic slump. But at the same time his last (his 89th!) premier-class win was four years ago.
Rossi’s long-extended purple patch allowed him to be casually arrogant towards his rivals. The likes of Max Biaggi and Sete Gibernau were particular targets for scorn, which was enthusiastically echoed by the growing army of Rossi fans. The fit was not so good when Lorenzo arrived and started to beat him, although the Spaniard’s quirky persona worked against him for those faithful yellow-clad supporters.
Marquez, in contrast, proved more intractable—and for the fans, even more polarizing. Rossi’s attacks, however, lacked the confident superiority of the past, and lapsed into serious indignity in the 2015 affair. Rossi unaccountably accused Marquez of conspiring to support Lorenzo’s championship—by beating both of them in Australia (eh?), attacked him publicly prerace in Malaysia, and then forced him off the track in the race. The subsequent back-of-the-grid penalty effectively cost Rossi the chance of an eighth championship, Lorenzo winning by five points.
Missing from the above list—King Kenny Roberts, who decided to quit with dignity intact while still at the top of his game, but whose hope of a fourth and final championship was denied by an irony that has only achieved full force this year. This is a tale I never tire of telling, for I feel the injustice every time the FIM Stewards Panel penalizes a rider for sometimes quite minor last-lap transgressions.
Kenny was battling against fast stripling Freddie Spencer, and finally lost the 1983 crown by just two points. The key moment was the last lap of the Swedish GP, where Spencer’s attack on the penultimate corner put both of them off the track, with Kenny suffering more than Freddie.
Spencer now heads the FIM Stewards Panel, in charge of applying sanctions, and one of several rules applied without an inch of flexibility applies to exceeding track limits on the last lap. Unless you were forced off (as Kenny was), you automatically lose one place. Had this applied in Sweden in 1983, Freddie would have been demoted to second, and Kenny would have won the championship.
Ah well, although Ozymandias might not have agreed, all good things come to an end, and Freddie’s own brilliant career came to a premature and still puzzling end barely two years later. CN