Thunder from Down Under: In Conversation with Casey Stoner

Aussie rider Casey Stoner won his last MotoGP world championship in 2011, with Honda

In 2012, I had an opportunity to interview then-reigning MotoGP world champion, Casey Stoner, a month after he’d announced his retirement from the sport. Here are some excerpts from that conversation.

MotoGP represents the most formidable form of closed-circuit motorcycle road racing. With 1000cc engines that produce up to 330-horsepower, MotoGP bikes weigh less than 160 kilos and hit top speeds of about 350km/h. In recent years, advanced electronics and traction control systems have made it a tiny bit easier to control these machines, but you still need superhuman talent to ride these beasts at competitive speeds around some of the most demanding, challenging race circuits in the world.

MotoGP is a demanding sport – physically and mentally – and those who race in MotoGP are some of most capable athletes in the world. Australian rider Casey Stoner, with his two world championships, is right up there with the best. Riding for Ducati, he took an amazing 10 race wins in 2007, winning his first MotoGP world championship, and repeated the feat in 2011, winning his second championship with Honda.

Now 27 years old, Stoner is widely considered to be the fastest man in the world on two wheels – one of the most talented motorcycle racers of his time. In a shock move, Casey announced that he will retire from MotoGP at the end of the 2012 season. In this interview that I did with him [on behalf of Man’s World magazine], Stoner talks about the sport he loves most, the changes he thinks it needs and his rivalry with Valentino ‘The Doctor’ Rossi. Here are some excerpts:

Past Perfect: Honda CB1100RS

1980s-styling, modern-day brakes, tyres and suspension. The Honda CB1100RS, which is now sadly out of production, is my dream bike. How times change!

‘We look before and after, and pine for what is not,’ said English poet Percy Shelley, two-hundred years ago. The English poet was definitely no biker-boy, but what he said does apply to motorcycles as well. Well, at least for some of us. Let me explain. When I was young, I lusted after the latest, fastest, most powerful sportsbikes and superbikes – Suzuki GSX-Rs, Yamaha FZRs, Honda CBRs and Kawasaki ZXR Ninjas. Exotic Ducatis and Bimotas. And BMWs, which were always a bit weird. These were machines I only saw in the pages of second-hand foreign magazines like Cycle World and Bike, copies of which I was sometimes able to get in bookshops in Hazratganj, in Lucknow. At that time, I used to have a Yamaha RX100, which had an 11bhp, two-stroke engine that loved to rev its heart out. Eleven horsepower isn’t really much, but the magic was in the way in which the Yamaha engine delivered that power – instant acceleration and long wheelies in 1^st gear. I can’t begin to tell you how much I loved that Yamaha.