TwoStroke Institute wrote:If ever there was a reason to 'engage brain before mouth' Kevin typifies this everytime he feels the need to comment on Casey Stoner.
Sometimes I wonder if Schwantz writes his bits for Soup to a Dean Adams' agenda; I've only ONCE seen a Schwantz piece where he could actually use the word 'won' in a sentence about Stoner (seriously!). When Stoner made the pass on Lorenzo last year at L.S., Schwantz was interviewed immediately and couldn't have praised Stoner more - then a few days later, his '34' column in Soup was pretty much back to the old Schwantz. His piece when Stoner took time off to deal with the lactose intolerance was pretty damn hypocritical for a man who pulled the pin in the middle of a season.
I have great respect for what Schwantz did as a rider but his commentary seems too full of 'look at me, remember me" stuff - far more than any other retired rider that I know about. Stoner has left Schwantz's records in the dust and it seems he doesn't react well to that at all. I'll take Suppo's comment that 'Life is easier if you know how to lie, but that isn't him' as a summary of Stoner than anything Schwantz has to say.
Squidpuppet wrote:Also somewhat surprising to me is that Casey didnt recognize that MotoGP has always been about the money as well as racing. Promoters and track owners have always been in this business to make money. Sponsor have always shelled out the coin to promote their brand and sell more product. Manufacturers have always raced in an effort to sell more bikes. Riders have always wanted to get to the top to make the big bucks. It has always been a business. I'm not sure why Casey feels like it's more about money now than it was 14 years ago.
Fair comment indeed. Stoner was perhaps (indeed probably) extremely naive, and it's hit him hard that it just isn't what he'd hoped for at the top. Who of us hasn't gone through a career path where you start out at the bottom, you progress and the money and responsibility seem sufficient reward for the frustrations, then after a while you find that the only real satisfaction comes from being as good as you can be at your job - and one day you wake up to the fact that the corporation you work for doesn't, in fact, give a shit about that, just that you keep on churning out the results and that nothing you can do will change the nature of the beast you work for? At that point you either: a) settle for turning up, doing the job, going home and finding your satisfaction to combat those frustrations elsewhere, or b) quit and go seek new challenges where the opportunity for satisfaction at least appears to be greater. Whether you are right or wrong about the course you take, at least you are taking a decision to value your spirit and soul above accepting being just a number in someone else's game.
Stoner has opted for plan b), and being Stoner, when asked why, he has answered. OK, he doesn't have the life experience to understand that there's no point in trying to change what you felt was wrong by giving a spray about it; that's hardly unique. Just what - two weeks ago - we had a senior guy in one of the world's biggest banks - a guy earning hugely more than Stoner - quit and lay on a spray that resounded around the financial world - worldwide. It's just human nature, and surely by no means one of the more odious sides of human nature.
Stoner's entire background has not prepared him for dealing with the ravages to the soul that working within a very, very commercial 'system' causes and he's decided to get out. Look around you at the people who've taken 'early retirement' from a high-paid, high-pressure job and gone and done something entirely different. It's so common, we have a syndrome named for it: 'sea-change'. Go out into your community and I'll bet you can find, pretty damn quickly, more than one example of this: the guy who runs the fishing-tackle shop who was a senior partner in some large corporation, the hobby-shop guy who was a senior government official etc. Australia is littered with small vineyards run by people with these sorts of backgrounds - one of my best friends is a prime example, an ex-Qantas senior captain who sodded it off and went back to the farming life where he grew up. Scratch any community (at least in the 'developed' countries where there are sufficiently varied opportunities to allow life above the subsistence level) and you'll find people who have done basically what Stoner has done.
And when you do find these people, judge them as you do Stoner - or vice-versa.
