Ep. 132: Valentino Rossi – Top 5 Achievements
Intro
Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
I’m Jans your Mnemonic Man and today's episode will be on one of the greatest motorcycle riders of all time, Valentino Rossi, who is affectionately known as “The Doctor”.
Now I must confess I’m actually a huge fan of motorcycle racing and in my younger years used to be obsessed with doing track days down at Phillip Island on a regular basis. I made it all the way up to the racing group and completed all four levels of The Superbike School, and to this day it still blows my mind to the fact, that I would get around in the low 1.50s and when the MotoGP circus came to town, they would do it, in just under one-minute thirty! It always looks so easy on TV but believe me the physicality and the level of focus you require is intense, especially when you know your bike is not insured as no insurance company will take that risk.
Valentino Rossi started his career following in the footsteps of his father, Graziano Rossi who was a successful motorcycle racer. He would make his Grand Prix debut in 1996 and quickly win world championships at all levels on his way to the premier class. Now I could go on and on with stats ad nauseum but what I really remember about Valentino Rossi were the epic battles along the way. Battles with racing legends such as Max Biaggi, Sete Gibernau, Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez. The battle with Max Biaggi who was known as “The Roman Emperor” or “Mad Max” was extremely heated at times, Sete Gibernau, he basically sent to a mental asylum, where I think the straw that broke the Camel’s back was the Spanish Grand Prix where Rossi run him off the off the track on the very last corner to win.
The relationship with Casey Stoner was bitter with many disparaging comments made, one where Stoner remarked after an incident with Rossi “His ambition outweighed his talent”. Jorge Lorenzo was his teammate but the relationship was icy cold with Rossi putting up a wall between the teammates in the pits. Finally, Marc Márquez, who was the young whiz who never took a backwards step which led to many on-track incidents.
In addition to this, I also remember the celebrations after race victories for which there were many. A personal favourite of mine was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” after Rossi won his seventh world title.
Today’s mnemonic will be on Valentino Rossi’s top 5 achievements.
So, with no further ado, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valentino_Rossi_2010_Laguna_Seca.jpg
Wikipedia Summary
Valentino Rossi (/ˈrɒsi/; Italian: [valenˈtiːno ˈrossi]; born 16 February 1979) is an Italian racing driver, former professional motorcycle road racer and nine-time Grand Prix motorcycle racing World Champion. Nicknamed The Doctor, he is widely considered to be one of the greatest motorcycle racers of all time,[1][2] with some labelling him as the greatest ever.[3] He has nine Grand Prix World Championships to his name, seven of which were in the premier 500cc/MotoGP class. He holds the record for most premier class victories, with 89 to his name. He won premier class World Championships with both Honda and Yamaha. He is also the only road racer to have competed in 400 or more Grands Prix,[4] and rode with the number 46 for his entire career.
After graduating to the premier class in 2000, Rossi won the final 500cc World Championship (becoming the last satellite rider to win the top-class title to date) and the 8 Hours of Suzuka with Honda in 2001. He also won MotoGP World Championships with the factory Honda Team in 2002 and 2003 and continued his run of back-to-back championships by winning the 2004 and 2005 titles after leaving Honda to join Yamaha. He lost the 2006 title with a crash in the final round at Valencia. In 2007 he ultimately finished third overall, before regaining the title in 2008 and retaining it in 2009.[5] After a 2010 season marred by a broken leg and no title defence, he left Yamaha to join Ducati, replacing Casey Stoner for the 2011 and 2012 seasons, and endured two winless seasons with the Italian marque.[6][7]
Rossi returned to Yamaha in 2013 and finished fourth in the standings followed by three successive runner-up positions in 2014, 2015 and 2016. His best chance of winning a tenth title came in 2015, where he led the standings for most of the season, finishing five points behind teammate Jorge Lorenzo, the eventual champion. 2017 was the final season he achieved over 200 points in the championship and he took his final race victory at the 2017 Dutch TT at the age of 38. After three winless seasons with the factory Yamaha team, he moved to Petronas SRT for 2021, retiring after only one season with the satellite Yamaha team and failing to achieve a podium for the first time in a career spanning 26 seasons in Grands Prix. The dominant force in MotoGP in the 2000s, all of Rossi's seven premier class titles came in this decade, including 77 race wins and 48 pole positions.
Rossi was inducted into the MotoGP Hall of Fame as an official Legend by the FIM at the awards ceremony after the conclusion of the 2021 season.[9] His #46 bike number was retired at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix.[10] Rossi owns the Racing Team VR46, which competes in both Moto2 and MotoGP as of 2022. He also plans to be involved in and administering his motorcycle racing team VR46.[11] In addition to his team management role, Rossi competes full-time in GT World Challenge Europe, driving for Team WRT.[12]
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentino_Rossi]
Mnemonic
Valentino Rossi – Top 5 Achievements Mnemonic – Grand PRoPS
(Picture Valentino Rossi as the Grand Master of the Motorcycle Grand Prix and the FIM giving him his props by inducting him as a legend of the Moto GP Hall of Fame)
1. 9 Grand Prix World Championships
2. Most Points
3. Most Race Starts
4. Most Podium Finishes
5. Most Seasons with a Pole Position
Five Fun Facts
1. Rossi started his passion with speed in karts. His dad who was an ex-motor bike racer saw his potential on two wheels and was happy that Rossi pursued the bikes as they were a lot cheaper than carts. He never lost that passion for carts though, and in 2006 he was seriously considering making the leap to Formula 1 as a Ferrari test driver. Fortunately, for bike fans, he stayed on two wheels.
2. Valentino Rossi grew up in Tavullia which is a village on the Rimini Riviera. He still lives there and has strong roots, and it is the residence of the official 46 Fan Club, the Academy and headquarters of his Moto2 and MotoGP teams, and also contains the “ranch”, which is the place where he trains.
Along with this, he still has a group of friends who he grew up with, who were once known as the “Chihuahua Tribe.”
3. Now to his famous number, number 46. There are a couple of reasons behind this and the first one is that he chose this number in honour of his father who was a professional racer who won his first race in the 250cc class in 1979, which just happened to be the year that Valentino was born. While the second reason was, that when he was a child, he saw a race at Suzuka where a local rider started from the last position on the grid and ended up winning the race bearing the number 46.
4. Valentino Rossi is the only rider to have won World Championships in four classes: 125, 250, 500, and MotoGP. Along with this Rossi and Giacomo Agostini are the only two riders to have won premier class titles on both two-stroke and four-stroke bikes.
5. Another record Rossi holds is the most successive premier class podiums with an amazing 23 in a row. This record was from the Portuguese GP in 2002 to the South African GP in 2004.
6. Valentino’s helmets are also legendary and were designed by Aldo Drudi an Italian designer and friend of Rossi’s father. Some of the better-known designs included, the donkey, the shark chasing the little fish, the Sun and the Moon, and The Italian Dream which pretty much turned out to be a nightmare with Ducati!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valentino_Rossi_and_Valentino_Rossi_2015_Assen.jpeg
Three Question Quiz
Q.1. What is Valentino Rossi’s famous nickname?
Q.2. What year was Rossi inducted into the MotoGP Hall of Fame as an official legend by the FIM? Options are 2011, 2015, or 2021
Q.3. Valentino Rossi is only surpassed in Grand Prix victories by one man. Who is that man and what country does he come from?
Bonus Q. Which well-respected Australian chief racing engineer did Rossi take with him when he moved from Honda to Yamaha in 2004? Hint: His initials are JB
Bonus Q. What is the most dangerous part of a motorcycle?
Mnemonic Recap
Valentino Rossi – Top 5 Achievements Mnemonic – Grand PRoPS
(Picture Valentino Rossi as the Grand Master of the Motorcycle Grand Prix and the FIM giving him his props by inducting him as a legend of the Moto GP Hall of Fame)
1. 9 Grand Prix World Championships
2. Most Points
3. Most Race Starts
4. Most Podium Finishes
5. Most Seasons with a Pole Position
Three Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. What is Valentino Rossi’s famous nickname?
A. The Doctor. He received that nickname because Rossi is a common surname for Doctors in Italy, though his father says that it is because in Italy it is a name that you give to someone for respect, someone important. However, it doesn’t matter now because it has become a reality with Rossi receiving the honorary title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Communication and Public Relations from the University of Urbino in 2005.
Q.2. What year was Rossi inducted into the MotoGP Hall of Fame as an official legend by the FIM? Options are 2011, 2015, or 2021
A. 2021 at the end of the season
Q.3. Valentino Rossi is only surpassed in Grand Prix victories by one man. Who is that man and what country does he come from?
A. Giacomo Agostini with 122 victories and he is from Italy. Valentino Rossi is second with 115 victories.
Bonus Q. Which well-respected Australian chief racing engineer did Rossi take with him when he moved from Honda to Yamaha in 2004? Hint: His initials are JB
A. Jeremy Burgess who also worked for world champions Wayne Gardner, and Mick Doohan
Bonus Q. What is the most dangerous part of a motorcycle?
A. Apparently, it’s the nut that connects the seat to the handlebar!
Word of the Week
bedizen
[ bih-dahy-zuhn ]
verb
to dress or adorn in a showy, gaudy, or tasteless manner.
Example
For Valentino Rossi’s victory celebration at the Catalunya Grand Prix in 1998 he had a friend (Polleria Osvaldo) bedizen in a chicken suit who he then took for a victory ride.
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
Website:
https://www.themnemonictreepodcast.com/
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/trivia-the-mnemonic-tree-podcast/id1591795132
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3T0LdIJ9PBQMXM3cdKd42Q?si=fqmaN2TNS8qqc7jOEVa-Cw
References
https://kids.kiddle.co/Valentino_Rossi