The very nature of the sport makes MotoGP™ a Championship of logic-defying comebacks, but was Marc Marquez’s amazing weekend the greatest in 75 years? The Gresini Ducati rider joined the likes of Mick Doohan and Barry Sheene, who fought back from terrible and in some cases life-threatening injuries, not only to race again but win Grands Prix and ultimately World titles.
Marquez had to wait 1043 painful, desperate, soul-searching days between his last MotoGP™ win in 2021 and his record-breaking weekend in Aragon. Phil Read had the longest wait of 3200 days between premier class Grands Prix wins but won plenty of other class races in between. Doohan and Sheene may not have had to wait so long, but their fight against pain, desperation, and their utter determination to return to the track stands them out from mere mortals.
In 1992, Mick Doohan was running away with the 500cc World Championship on the factory Honda. The Australian had won five of the opening seven rounds and led the Championship by 53 points when we arrived in Assen. He crashed in the accident-littered final qualifying session and snapped the tibia and fibula in his right leg. I was in the medical centre when Mick decided to have the leg operated on at the local hospital and hoped to be back in 15 days at the Hungarian Grand Prix. He had a successful operation with plates fitted to pin the broken bones, but then it started to go so wrong.
Mick knew something was very wrong when his foot started to turn black, and he could smell dying flesh around the wound. When talk of amputation was mentioned it was time to get him out. Legendary Grand Prix doctor, Italian Dr Costa, smuggled him out of the hospital together with Kevin Schwantz who had broken his forearm and dislocated his hip in a race crash. They flew to Dr Costa’s clinic in Imola. There was every chance that Mick was going to have his right leg amputated but treatment in Imola and America saved him. At one stage he had his two legs sewn together to try and restore circulation from one to the other. Despite hardly being able to walk he returned to defend a 22-point Championship lead at the penultimate round in Brazil, but eventually lost the Championship to Wayne Rainey by four precious points. It was another year before Mick won a Grand Prix at Mugello in 1993. A year later he clinched the first of his successive five World 500cc titles.
Sheene survived two big crashes. The first at Daytona made him a national hero in Britain. In 1975, I travelled to Daytona by Greyhound bus after flying to New York only to discover that Sheene had crashed in practice. A television crew had flown out to America to film him and typically Barry took full advantage. Lying in the hospital casualty department he told the camera he had broken his right femur, a broken right arm, compression fractures to several vertebrae and a great loss of skin. He then requested the customary cigarette. He became a national hero overnight when the film was shown. Barry was back in action just seven weeks later and won his first 500cc Grand Prix at Assen two months after that. Barry was crowned World Champion in 1976 and the following season.
Marquez is back to winning Grands Prix and is that ninth world title around the corner? It probably will not be this year, but opponents be warned the comeback has only just started.
The next two Grand Prix races are staged around Misano on the Adriatic coast of Italy, which is where Marquez’s record is just as good as it was in Aragon. Already seven wins around the 4.2km Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, including his last MotoGP™ win in 2021 before Aragon.
Perhaps it is wrong to suggest any rider’s comeback is the greatest because every one of them is so special and a perfect illustration of just what Grand Prix riders are all about.
