Max Biaggi, 50 on June 26, got on a motorcycle for the first time at the age of 18 and, soon after, he was already racing and winning races. Past the 250, he won four consecutive world championships. Plus two world championships in Superbike. Now he has his own team in Moto3, lo Sterilgarda Max Racing Team. He has just finished preparing breakfast “for the crew”, or rather for the two children of the former Miss Italy Eleonora Pedron. Explain that, when I’m with him, he prefers not to have babysitters. It is said sample of steamed rice and zucchini. He confesses that if his 10-year-old son Leon wanted to be a motorcyclist, he would be discouraged. He sighs … «It’s dangerous. I’d rather not see him on the track ».
What road companion is fear, when you run at 350 per hour?
«Not received. When you dress up as a pilot, you are like in a video game. Enzo Ferrari used to say that every child you have, you go a second slower, but having won two world championships as a father, I discovered that it is not true. If anything, I began to think that the plane could crash ».
Doesn’t fear even come after the first fall?
“No, I had two decades of experience by now. The absurd story is the 2017 accident, at 40 per hour, a serious trauma. After the first operation, on awakening, groggy from drugs and pain, I clearly remember that the head physician came. There were mom and dad, the head physician said that, with that kind of trauma, 80 percent die. I didn’t blink, I was too dazed to understand, but I looked at Dad and Mom and they were white in the face, who had a tear, who was holding it back. I zero. So much so that they asked the head physician to re-explain it to me ».
And when did he tell her he had a 20 percent chance of surviving?
“I saw the film of my life go by in a flash. I thought of Schumacher: he made a living at 380 per hour and then he was screwed by a fall on skis. Then, I thought of Nicky Hayden: he had been my teammate and, twenty days earlier, he had died on a bike. I saw a champion curse. I asked myself: am I next? There I realized that I was made of flesh and blood ».
He said he would never ride a motorbike again, then in November he set the world record on electric ones: 408 kilometers per hour.
«As Ayrton Senna said, a man who stops dreaming is a man who has nothing more to say. If you don’t have a dream, an ambition, a guiding light, how do you live? ».
What is the goal now?
“Break that record.”
The most exciting moment of your career?
“The first 500th MotoGP race, in ’98: I started from pole, I won and even set the track record, something that happened only 25 years earlier to Jarno Saarinen and then it happened to me, I don’t even know why . But the greatest moment is always when you win the world championship ».
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Motorcycling, falls while training: Max Biaggi in hospital
He won six.
“And each one has a different flavor. The last one in 250 was just passed to Honda after three wins with Aprilia: they hadn’t reconfirmed me and I managed to beat them ».
Why does a team change a driver who has won three world championships in a row?
«They reproached me for talking too much about me and little about Aprilia. The opposite of what marketing does today ».
Even the newspapers criticized her because she was in the star system and had the most beautiful women of the time. If I tell you Naomi Campbell?
“What should I say? She’s gorgeous”.
How long have you been together?
“Never been together.”
Year 1997, Naomi is with the dancer Joaquín Cortés, and they paparazzano in the middle of a kiss.
“It wasn’t a kiss and I introduced it to Joaquín. Shortly after I see him again in Milan, she had tried to commit suicide for love. Joaquín made me a gesture like: damn you who introduced her to me ».
To make fun of her, Valentino Rossi took a ride to Mugello with Claudia Schiffer’s inflatable doll. It was a rivalry worse than Coppi-Bartali, with him overtaking her and giving her the middle finger, a half fight in Barcelona 2001 …
“Let’s make this part short.”
Instead it was long. When did it start?
«Athletes have real rivalry when they compete in the same race and category. Instead, I was 250, he was 125 and the newspapers were already embroidering on them ».
When Rossi shows the doll where are we?
«That I ran in one category, he in another. One thing is the rivalry created by the newspapers and another that it feeds it exponentially ».
Today, if you see him, do you greet him?
“I would say hello, but he doesn’t say hello to me.”
After her parents separated, she has not spoken to her mother for years. Have you found yourselves?
“I was 13 or 14. We got closer when I became a father, thanks to Eleonora. I admit it was a good thing ».
In retrospect, how do you explain the sudden explosion of your talent?
“I’ve never explained it to myself. Sometimes I resent Biagio Antonacci who wrote for me The sample. The words are the answer: “You feel the joy that comes from you and you ask yourself every time: why, my God, did you give this to me”? ».
June 23, 2021 (change June 23, 2021 | 23:56)
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