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Today it has been a great day. Andrea Maida, speedway champion, I take care of his
web site, tells me he'll attend an open day party at a very good motorcycle clothing shop:
Valeri Sport (Cornuda, TV, Italy). Taking care of his communication and press releases, and being me close to the place, I simply couldn't miss it. The day was a little strange. There wasn't Maida only. Other two world racing championship icons were there: One of them is an old friend of mine (my race bike and my leathers are signed by him): Marco Lucchinelli.
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| Marco Lucchinelli |
The other?
Well....
His name is scary.
His Palmarès overwhelms any other pilot from the
past,
present, and let me say it,
future.
Does it rings any bell if I say:
15 WORLD CHAMPIONS?
I believe, if you regularly read me, that you have an idea about who I am talking about.
It is him.
Without any doubt the greatest race motorcycles champion of all times....
....and if sport motorcycling had a god, probably, it is him. Or better:
Him.
Giacomo Agostini.
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| Giacomo AGO Agostini |
Super.
This gentleman, just to tell you something, is 6 world championship ahead of Mr. Valentino Rossi... and at the respectable age of 71, he is still in top shape, and hasn't given up riding bike at all, and, as Lucchinelli himself admits, still pushes hard even on the honor laps at the Isle Of Man TT. So hard that Lucchinelli, 1981 500cc world champion, cannot keep up without putting some serious effort, so hard the doesn't really step back when there are those terrific jumps around the great famous street track.
Seeing these two icons together is an unique event, so special, so legendary.
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| Marco e Giacomo con lo staff di Valeri Sport |
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If some of you thinks that, despite the age, despite giving up professional races, they set asleep their competitive attitude, well, you are wrong.
Very wrong.
Seeing them together signing pictures, posters and T-Shirt for the wide public attending there is pure fun. They make fun the one of the other. They laugh. Joke. They even mind they own fucking business talking about a meeting they have later this week. Maybe Marco, who plays in a band, wants to let Agostini listen the song he wrote for MV Agusta and the great 15 times world champion?
Telling you this kind of takes away the real feeling I experienced. I'll try, still.
Do you know how Lucchinelli calls Agostini? AGONY.
Well, they raced as rivals back then. Marco was at his beginnings, Giacomo was already ahead on his a career, as Marco says: "He already had his ball big enough to reach down the knees". Marco admits: "I was very upset seeing him arriving at the track on a Lamborghini, while I was still struggling on a crappy van. But a man must deserve what he got, and this Gentleman got the balls!". So funny. Their dialog was a war, and they often touched some second meaning, mostly sex oriented. Marco admits the supremacy of the rival on the street circuits, like the TT (Agostini says it took him two years to learn the whole track), but he says: "On a real racetrack I rape you!". And Giacomo replies: "You only rape women!".
They're both some damn womanizers. Marco, while posing with Agostini and the beautiful model for pictures tells the girl: "Beware, his hand can reach anywhere....", referring to the super champion.
Did you know Agostini still is pissed of because he won 15 and not 16 world championships? In 1965 he lost the title because of an electric issue on his bike on the final race in Japan ("a couple of cents worth capacitor", says Agostini). He really didn't take it any good!
The two epic racer aren't so happy of nowadays racing scene. They claim that back then being fast meant controlling the bike with your right wrist. Now? You open wide and the electronic does almost everything.
Marco says "Pilots are lucky guys. They race bikes, people go to see 'em and they got well paid too. They shouldn't complain, and they shouldn't rise that hand when it rains. They should keep on racing and let the best one win!!!". A symbolic anecdote by Marco again: "once I complained with my mechanic because the bike was swinging on the rear" (he moves his hand to show how the bike moved) "The mechanic, with a strict Italian dialect replied me: Bikes are like Women: they have fun when they smoke, drink and swing their asses!"
Engines. Women. Passion.
I ask Marco why he didn't go down in Dubai with our Barry Rivellini, to do some tests. And he answers: "I don't go Dubai. Beer is expensive. Men use skirts and women are dressed up you cannot see their faces, so you don't know what kind of crap is laying underneath!"
Two styles, two great guys, two immortal icons.
Somebody asks Marco whether he prefer MOTOGP or WSBK. He admits the track days with him are the best around, the most real, the one that are true and real. He adds that he loves races, and that the paddock is full of people that nobody really knows what they are there for, while Agostini confirms that paddock is full of people busy with their laptpos.
Races, in Marco's opinion, must be watched with TV volume set to zero. From start to end, the rest is useless.
Since I am in touch with Marco, we are friends, I told him that watching races, to me, is kinda like watching a porn movie: you just see somebody else fucking.
Marco smiles and confirms that. We somehow share a certain life philosophy. You only live once, and you must enjoy at maximum levels. And if you passion means two wheels, there is only one thing to do: hop in the saddle and open that throttle wide.
When you're back from a track day, or some 300km canyon carving ride, and you feel tired or even a little like a hero, well, remember that Lucchinelli still rides 250000km on pubic road. Plus track. Andrea Maida wears off 3 to 4 tires set per year, again on public road. And then there's the track also for him.
And Giacomo Agostini? He still jumps at the Ballaugh's Bridge....
