Valentino Rossi loses a rival historian

Jorge Lorenzo leaves MotoGP after a legendary career. After many historic duels, Valentino Rossi loses a respectable opponent.

Five world champions, 295 disputed races, of which as many as 68 saw him as the winner, to which are added 152 podiums (total podiums, therefore 220), 3943 points obtained and a career full of satisfactions. We are talking about Jorge Lorenzo, who declared that Valencia will be his last race, as Ansa tells us this news. The tribute of Vale Rossi to his "enemy" and former partner in Yamaha could not be missed, of which he recalled in particular the duel of Barcelona in 2009 that thrilled the whole world. It is not just "The Doctor" who spends words of admiration for the pilot from Palma de Maiorca. But also Dovizioso who considers him "a great rival", as well as the many experts who remember him for his great concentration and speed.

The beginnings in Yamaha and the physical problems

As already mentioned, although Lorenzo was Valentino Rossi's team-mate, on 13 April 2008, in spite of any online sports betting forecast, and not, Jorge Lorenzo won his first ever GP on the Estoril circuit, in front of two sacred monsters like Pedrosa and Vale. We can say that this event contains a bit of the career of the Majorcan champion. Since the following day Lorenzo had to undergo a fasciotomy operation in Barcelona, ​​to intervene on his problems related to the compartment syndrome. The year 2008 continued with the breaking of both ankles, but in spite of everything he managed to end the season proposing himself as the best debutant in the GP motorcycle, with a fourth place overall and 190 points conquered. Not bad for someone who was only twenty-one at the time.

Ducati, Honda and retirement from racing

After eight years of idyll and satisfaction, Lorenzo in 2016 passed to Ducati, with a pharaonic contract worth over 12 million euros per season. Here, on his debut with the Italian team, he did not seem to confirm his maturity. He does not win any race (he hadn't done it since 2005) and ended the season with an "anonymous" seventh place and only 137 points won. A very different result from the second place won by teammate Dovizioso, behind only Marc Marquez on the Honda. In 2018, the quality and class remained unchanged, but so did fate, which led him to have another accident for a motorcycle failure during the tests of the GP of Thailand. This caused him a micro fracture of the left radio which clearly affected the final result. In fact, he finished the World Championship in ninth place with 134 points won, having had to miss four grand prizes.

In 2019 Lorenzo moved to Honda, but bad luck seems to haunt him again, giving him an appointment with the rupture of the dorsal vertebra, which forces him to skip several grand prizes and end the 2019 season in the shadows. the penta-Mallorcan champion has decided to leave the slopes, claiming to have realized that it is no longer possible to win. This shows how important physical integrity is to every athlete. The recovery period from an injury can affect mentally certainties that seemed to be acquired, as Lorenzo himself explained to the Gazzetta dello Sport. The MotoGP therefore greets a great protagonist of the last 10 years and a worthy rival of Rossi and other sacred monsters.