What If I Had Never Tried It

Book excerpt: Arguably the world’s all-time greatest motorcycle road racing champion, Valentino Rossi is without a doubt the best--and the best-loved--in modern times. In What If I Had Never Tried It he tells his remarkable story for the first time. And as might be expected, the story he tells is fast-paced, full of surprises, action-packed, and always entertaining. The son of 1970s racer Graziano Rossi (whose number, 46, he wears when racing), Valentino was born in Urbino, Italy in 1979. Here he relates how he started racing as a teenager, first with karts and minimotos (minibikes). He then traces his rapid and seemingly inexorable progress--from the 125 class to the 250 class to the 500s and finally on to 990 cc four-stroke, now known as MotoGP--to become a seven-time World Champion in Grand Prix racing by the time he was twenty-six. As he describes starting his career as a clownish upstart, only to emerge as “The Doctor” so famed for his precision, Rossi’s crowd-pleasing character comes through in abundance. One moment a charismatic jokester, the next an insightful analyst, he is finally the single-minded, focused, strategic racer with split-second skills the rest of us can only dream of, giving us a glimpse of how one man has forever changed the face of motorcycle road racing.