Hitting the Apex Page #5

there have been this year?

Six hundred and ninety.

Six hundred and ninety crashes.

Fractures and so on?

I don't know, about 30.

In my career, also when I was

young, I don't take a lot of risks.

I take risks,

but not more than necessary.

Graziano took a lot more risks then me.

Valentino Rossi's father

Graziano was a grand prix rider

in the Seventies and Eighties

who retired through injury.

Growing up, I learned from him.

The son learned

from the father's mistakes.

Bad memories, a lot of crashes,

a lot of injuries.

So, yes, it's scary

because he's my father.

It will happen.

Learning means crashing.

When you're out

to extract the maximum

from a 240-horsepower motorcycle,

there's no other way.

Go over the limit

and then you know where it is.

A fast rider

can learn to stop crashing.

A slow rider cannot learn to go fast.

You have to do it. You have to crash.

And you have to learn from it

if you want to stay around.

There's many examples in this world

of a very fast rider, but not smart.

And their career's been very short.

To be fast is not enough.

You need to have a combination

of being fast and brave

and also be intelligent.

In his rookie year in MotoGP,

Jorge Lorenzo once crashed

three times in a single weekend.

I thought I was invincible.

And I was not afraid to get hurt.

I was not afraid

of these kind of bikes,

going at 340 kilometers per hour.

I didn't care.

It was a normal thing

to crash so many times.

And then suddenly I realize,

OK, I need to stop.

I need to change my mentality.

I need to be more calm.

I need to... to think more on the bike.

We've been looking at the

training that American fighter pilots do

and also how

the Israeli special forces train.

The theory is that it's all in the mind

so we work directly

with the mind of the rider.

There is no correct way

to ride a MotoGP machine.

The objective is to go as fast

as possible and stay on the bike.

How you do that is up to you.

I came from dirt tracks.

I came from sliding.

I'm more than comfortable

when the bike's going sideways.

It's one of the mysteries of the sport.

How two riders with styles

as different as Stoner's and Lorenzo's

can go round a three-mile race track

within a thousandth of a second

of each other.

Stoner sideways, shaking and sliding.

Lorenzo as if on rails.

I'm pushing 100%

and I'm going at the maximum.

I am feeling the limit in every corner.

I'm trying to be perfect.

Every time he won a grand prix,

the church bells in Rossi's home town

rang out in celebration.

105 times from 1996 to 2010.

Then he moved to Ducati.

And the bells stopped ringing.

Ducati was an experience.

Let's not say a happy experience.

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