Quote:
Originally Posted by motion
Yeah, I'm with Kevin 100% on this. BTW, Kevin Schwantz is a real man's racer. That guy is badass.
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Agreed. He's an old school racer and is not afraid to speak his mind, politics be damned.
If you've been around racing as long as I have, you get to know a bunch of racers. The serious ones started at age 3 or 4 on a bike and that was all they knew. They grew up riding and racing anything on two wheels and they paid their dues. It's not a gentleman's sport. It's tough and it's not like car racing, at all. The guys I know grew up racing whatever races they could find, three or four days (or nights) a week and home was a sleeping bag in the back of a worn-out panel van. The prize money bought gas and hamburgers to get them to the next race. If they did well enough...
What people that have never raced don't understand is that a race is somewhat like a chess match at 100mph. You have the track, you have your preferred line, but that means jack **** when there are other riders near you. Watch any flat track or speedway race. Yeah, they all have a certain line they'd prefer to take (might be more than one good line through a corner) but they don't get to take that line if someone is already there. They deal with it. They get in each others way. They bump each other. Just another night, at another race.
If you think the speeds are a factor, after a few years, running 100mph might feel like you're parked, if the top end of a straight means 200mph. It's all relative and these guys are so good, they don't need much of their attention on staying upright. You might have sensory overload coming off of a corner at 100mph, they might be scanning the stands for good looking women, or reaching over to smack another rider on the ass, or hit their kill switch.
What we think and what they think are two vastly different things.
JR