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Common Tread

Valentino Rossi announces his retirement from motorcycle racing

Aug 05, 2021

In 2022, for the first time since 1995, Valentino Rossi will not be on the grid of a grand prix motorcycle race.

You can argue for days about who's the GOAT, the best racer ever, and those debates are usually guided more by prejudice than anything else. We all tend to focus on the riders who were at their peak when we first started watching racing or when we were most involved and we tend to ignore the history that already passed before we were paying attention (or even born). What is impossible to deny, however, is that Valentino Rossi is the best known motorcycle racer in the world. Motorcycle racing is a mere footnote in the United States, but travel elsewhere and ask a non-rider to name a motorcycle racer, and odds are very good it will be Rossi. (I don't have to go far to test that theory. I can just look across the room and ask my wife.)

That's why Rossi's decision to retire, which he announced today, matters more to the sport than most retirements. It's easy for me to say "It was time," given that his best finishes this year have been two 10th-place results. But what credentials do I have to say that about a guy with 115 grand prix wins?

Maybe Rossi's winless years since 2017 have made it easier, in a way. For years, his popularity was such that the organizers worried for the future of the sport once he was gone. As that inevitable moment approached, the concern seemed to dissipate. Even if Rossi was still on the grid, even if he still drew yellow legions to the track, the sport was moving on without him, because he was not a factor in the races.

I can measure the unusual longevity of Rossi's racing career by using yardsticks in my own life. I first saw him race in 1997 at what was then the A-1 Ring in Austria. It was his second year in the 125 class and he was on his way to his first world championship. It was three months after the birth of my nephew, and my wife and I were visiting my sister, who then lived in Hungary.

While I went to the track, my wife and sister watched the races on TV. Afterwards, my wife asked, "Who was that kid who won the first race? He looks like he's 10 years old."

"His name is Valentino Rossi," I said. "Some think he's going to be the next big thing."

Eighteen years later, she was pestering me to get her a Rossi T-shirt while I was at the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix.

My nephew, who was three months old then, is now out of college and employed and just got his first motorcycle (a very different 125).

Others have a lot more knowledge and insight than I do, so check out some of the tributes. There's MotoGP.com's review of Rossi's career. As usual, when there's MotoGP news, I turn to David Emmett's Motomatters site for the reporting. At The Race, several racing writers tell how Rossi shaped their MotoGP worlds. I always turn to Mat Oxley's writing for insight and here he notes that Rossi attracted not just petrolheads to racing, but also grandmothers and children and people who knew little about the sport. Yamaha recapped the many records and stats he amassed (6,330 world championship points, so far) in his long career, much of which was associated with Yamaha.

Social media was full of tributes, as well, everyone from the current MotoGP points leader to old competitors to industry types and regular fans.

Ciao, Vale.