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World motorcycle championship: the "little" champions once again distinguish themselves Two Grand Prix races are still too few to make a balance or give some judgements. Yet, one thing is certain: if a season is based on 16 races and one almost completely fails two, the march towards victory then becomes rather difficult. And if one aims at winning the championship, then it is unavoidable that critics will keep an eye on you. This is just what is happening to the Italian pilots who are competing in the main category, i.e. 500 cc. After years of supremacy by Australian Doohan, at the eve of the championship Italy could finally line up a team of strong pilots potentially able to win. Biaggi, Capirossi and Rossi: a fabulous trio. It is as the national team could simultaneously line up Zidane, Ronaldo and Del Piero. All the three have been champions in their relative classes (125 cc and 250 cc) and maybe have decided to pass to the most demanding category to find new spurs. Yet, after South Africa and Malaysia, the inaugural races of the 2000 season, the balance of the three champions is decidedly negative, with only a third place won by Capirossi in Welkom. Then nothing other, but only a sequence of falls, fractures and wrong tactics. Placing the three champions together in the group of the disappointed pilots is not certainly wrong. What might be an ideal mix of experience, freshness and creativity, is turning into a series of accidents. And what is more, like it happens in most cases when things do not go the right way, these athletes are showing their worst character. A pilot who is proving to be successful is instead Roberto Locatelli, who after winning in the 125cc class in Malaysia and gaining the fourth place in the opening Grand Prix, is now at the top. This is nothing new, since Italian pilots have always had the supremacy in the smallest class and also in the 250cc category. In the last ten years, Max Biaggi, Capirossi and Valentino Rossi have been alternating in winning championships, thus taking Italy at the top of this sport. And the huge investments made by motorcycle makers, mainly Aprilia, are the proof of how the leadership in the world championship can be useful in terms of image promotion and economic returns for Italian makers. But the ability to uninterruptedly create new champions in the two categories only to see them disappear once they are "grown up" leaves room for some major questions. The leap forward towards the most prestigious category might represent a problem if Italian pilots were not supported by high-level teams. But Yamaha and Honda, two historic and prestigious brands that with Kawasaki and Suzuki make up a fabulous foursome, have always backed talents, taking them to victory. Therefore, leaving aside the assumption that our champions have suddenly become non-starters or that they are not adequately supported by their teams, another hypothesis remains to explain their failures.  Antagonism undoubtedly spurs pilots to make better results, and with respect to verbal conflicts, we are now accustomed to quarrels between Rossi and Biaggi.  Yet now one might wonder if this total absence of friendly relationships can go to the detriment of the trio's performance, mainly in this moment. Withdrawing into oneself is not the best way to solve problems; maybe talking over them together, confronting the various experiences and revealing some useful tricks could permit at least one of the pilots to "score a goal". But motorcycling, just like Formula 1 has shown with its recent internal contrasts at Ferrari between Irvine and Schumacher, is the proof of how collaboration and teamwork may only be an optional. If this is the twisted point of view of pilots, which frustrates the work carried out by technicians and mechanics, then we should prepare ourselves for a difficult year in terms of results. At least until one of our champions manages to find an effective remedy for this negative trend.  Paolo Ghisoni

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