Rainey’s career ending crash
It was 18 years ago that MotoGP racing legend Wayne Rainey suffered the innocuous looking low side crash but one that paralysed him chest down at the Misano Circuit. Since then a number of things have changed at Misano including the direction in which racing now takes place (from clock-wise to anti clock-wise). Yamaha’s MotoGP operations are based very close to Misano and the Japanese factory has decided to dedicate a room to Wayne Rainey, arguably the greatest MotoGP racer of all time and definitely Yamaha’s most reputed along with King Kenny Roberts. Rainey was leading the world championship points and was 21 points ahead of his arch rival Kevin Schwantz when the tragedy occurred as the great man set after his teammate Luca Cadalora who was running away at the front. This will be the first time that the legend returns to Misano. He has said in the past that he had no regrets about anything including the accident. He said then that it was the best way to stop racing when you are ahead and still on the gas. This tribute to Rainey is very fitting and one that the truly great man deserves.
Prior to going racing in MotoGP Rainey raced in the AMA Superbikes series and won the championship on a Kawasaki and it is said that it was not the best machine on track and even Kawasaki were surprised that he could take it to victory. That is pretty much what he did with Yamaha, beating rivals like Mick Doohan even though they had superior power from Honda.
