#wr17

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schwantz vs rainey // acosta vs aldeguer

articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) + pictures (1, 2, 3, 4)

[prpis]

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MACKENZIE: As a bike racer winning the MotoGP Championship is the ultimate accolade. It's something you achieved in 1993, winning the 500cc Championship. Does it change you when you finally do it, or is it no big deal?

SCHWANTZ: It's more of a relief, that's what I felt, anyway. I was more fired up than anything as Mat Oxley (racing journalist and author) had told me I was well past my sell-by date. I wanted to give him a good kicking, but instead I just tried to be better. Also Wayne Rainey was my motivation. I always wanted to beat Rainey throughout my career. I was consumed and obsessed with that guy.

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when he what

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“It was, it was difficult… but as we got into the World Championship and you work very hard in this sport, there is only one winner, so fortunately in our era there was other guys that we also had to focus on,” continues Rainey. “Certainly at the end of my racing career, when we went head to head in 1993, I had much more respect from what he was doing. I really thought… what we were to what we are now, you know it was a serious and professional relationship as far as on the track we raced each other. One of the first guys I wanted to beat was him. He raised his game up and really make me work in a different way, which I did not do before.”

And Schwantz shares similar feelings: “I was only ever in one race, and it was against him! It didn’t matter, anybody else could beat me, but to lose to Wayne Rainey was, aaaah a knife in my heart! I could not get over it until the next weekend or the next race, or when it was another practice session. At least I needed to get in front of him in the practice session, everything about the race weekend revolved around whether I could be in front or him or not.”

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laguna seca 1988

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Once the contract for the 49-year-old Schwantz to take part in the race with Team Kagayama was signed, the Texan wanted to do something different. So he called up his friend and former great rival, three-time 500cc Grand Prix World Champion Wayne Rainey. "So I called Wayne, and said, 'Hey, Wayne. I'm doing the 8 Hours.' " Rainey wasn't impressed. "He said, 'What? F—king Schwantz. What're you thinking?!' " Schwantz laughed. " 'You know, thank you, Wayne, for saying that. Let me see if I can try and make sense of this all to you.' "

After Schwantz explained that it would be a three-rider team and that he would only be riding one hour or possibly two, Rainey then stated, “Well, if anybody can do it, it’ll be you.” Then Schwantz laid his plan out to his former rival. “I said, ‘Well, here’s what I’m thinking: I want to wear a Wayne Rainey replica helmet.’ And he said, ‘That would be an honor. Whatever you want to do, I’m 100 percent behind it.’ ”

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kevin schwantz on his rivalry with wayne rainey

“I read somewhere where Wayne once said that if he could have done something to get rid of me back then, he would have done it, because he felt like I’d had everything just handed to me and that I didn’t earn it. Well, I did get some lucky breaks, but I feel like I made the most of ’em. It wasn’t like I was floundering around for three years and then all of a sudden, I was making it.

“It was just as bad when I got to do a few GPs in ’86 and ’87. Then, in ’88, I won Daytona and went straight to Suzuka [Grand Prix]. It rained all week there and then on Sunday it stopped but the track was still wet. Well, I had just tested there three weeks before Daytona, and we had a wet setup that we knew, and we just threw it at the bike, and we ran away with the race. Then I won the fifth round in Germany, and Wayne told me later that after that happened, he couldn’t sleep at night, wondering how I’d won two GPs when he hadn’t even won his first one yet. It really ate on him.