latimes.com
By Shav Glick, Times Staff Writer
The name Valentino Rossi sounds more like that of an opera singer than a motorcycle racer, but it is fitting because the fun-loving Italian is a virtuoso.
On two wheels.
Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey, three Californians in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame with 10 world road racing championships among them, all say there has never been anyone better — maybe as good, but none better.
Henny Ray Abrams, an international racing authority, wrote, "Valentino Rossi is the greatest motorcycle racer ever," in the magazine Sport Rider.
And that was before Rossi, who lives in London and rides for Yamaha, grabbed the 2005 MotoGP season by the throat and held it hostage by winning six of the first seven races.
Although only 26, Rossi has won six world championships — the last four in a row in the sport's premier class. Three times he won on a Honda and last year on a Yamaha. He has never raced in the United States, but that gap in his resume will be closed this week when he rides in the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix on the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca's hillside course.
"I am happy come to California. I have never been there but I know is very beautiful for the sun, the beautiful girls," the heavily accented Rossi said by telephone from Assen, Holland, where last Sunday he won the Gauloises Dutch TT, race No. 7 in the 17-race MotoGP season.
"I know Laguna Seca only from TV," he said, then added mischievously, "and from my PlayStation. I know the layout. I have studied it many times. Colin [Edwards, a teammate] is very fast on PlayStation. We have some tough fights together.
"I think the track is very difficult because it goes up and down a lot and I think it is quite technical. Very difficult will be the first left after the straight and the Corkscrew, where there is change of direction and very much downhill."
Combining rare talent with an exuberance that endears him to fans, Rossi is a cult figure in Europe and Asia, where 200-mph motorcycle racing is as popular as Formula One, and sometimes more so. Two races in Spain last year, one in the rain, drew more than 200,000 spectators, and seven others attracted crowds of more than 100,000.
The three-day event in Monterey will be the first world road racing championship held in the United States since 1994 at Laguna Seca.
"Riding Laguna Seca sitting at a PlayStation may help him learn the layout and even the speed changes, but no electronic game can give you the feeling of the bumps and the acceleration you get on the track," warned Rainey, a three-time winner at Laguna Seca to go with his three world championships.
Rossi gained his reputation as a riding phenomenon when he became the youngest world 125cc champion in 1997 at 18, riding an Aprilia. Two years later, he won the 250cc title, once again with Aprilia. In 2000 he joined Honda and after finishing second in his first 500cc season, the next year he won 11 races on his way to the championship in what was the last of the two-stroke era. He was only 22.
When the FIM, motorcycle racing's international governing body, mandated four-stroke bikes in 2002 for the newly named MotoGP series, Rossi continued his success with another 11 wins and another championship.
The move that stunned the racing industry and gave Rossi an air of invincibility came after the 2003 season when he had won his third championship with all-conquering Honda, only to announce that he was defecting to a struggling Yamaha team.
"That switch took some [guts]," said three-time champion Roberts. "That's what makes him so good, he can take something not competitive, make it competitive and win on it. Yamaha would have made a good bike, but not good enough to win unless it had Valentino on it."
The move had a reverse effect on Honda.
Although Rossi says he switched because he wanted a new challenge, those close to him insist that he was nettled by Honda's attitude that the team's success was due to the bike, not the rider, and that another rider, given Rossi's bike, could win.
It didn't happen. In the first race of 2004, Rossi and the revamped Yamaha finished in front, followed by the Hondas of Max Biaggi, Sete Gibernau and Alex Barros.
"It was a miracle," Rossi said on the podium in South Africa.
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