Clinica Mobile


	November 03, 2009

	VALENTINO: THE WISDOM OF FOLLY

	Valentino Rossi, following the conquest of his ninth world championship title in the 2009 Moto GP Premier Class, was hailed as one of the all-time greats by just about everyone. Journalists have described him in a thousand different ways, others have defined him in terms of statistics and records. There is an Italian saying that goes “AN OLD HEN MAKES GOOD BROTH”, an expression designed to highlight the wisdom that comes with the passing of the years. As time goes by that saying seems ever-more pertinent to Valentino, a further line of dialogue in that colourful, high-speed theatre where the Champion continues to tell his seemingly never-ending story. That ‘old hen’ of fairy tales, which laid golden eggs in the nest of life to offer bountiful, undreamt-of riches is another image that leaps to mind. Yet my own personal thoughts on the matter take me in a different direction. Numbers are by now meaningless. Their power to sharpen the outline of reality is feeble. Valentino is already far beyond numbers, beyond abstract geometry: he is indefinable, unstoppable and incomparable. Not even Pythagoras, who, centuries ago, envisaged in numbers a kingdom that would transcend them, could define the planet inhabited by this incredible Champion. Valentino is already beyond that realm and beyond the philosophy of this pioneering Greek thinker. Valentino Rossi is beyond history, outside it looking in. His is a story that wanders the infinite horizons opened by his prodigious talent: a genius in infancy, a legend in youth, wise in adulthood. Even Valentino’s wisdom has a uniqueness. When, at Indianapolis, already with a firm championship lead, he fell in the dust and compromised the conquest of his ninth world title, his heart drew on a new, unknown wisdom: the transformation of error into dignity and dignity into new energy. By accepting and assimilating the ‘error’ inside his soul he exalted his own innocence and the laughing donkey depicted on his helmet, the floppy ass-ears he wore on the top of the podium at the end of the Misano GP showed everyone that only by humbly admitting these errors can they, as if by a miracle, stop persecuting you to become surprising allies, carriers of an unexpected, luminous luck. In the days after the American race Valentino got in touch with his ‘indignity’, the ‘corruption’ of that light which painted him as an eternal winner: with great courage he took a cold, hard look at his new reality- the wasted lead, his own limits – and audaciously exploited this heightened awareness to find true greatness by seeking out the wisdom that says we can arise from the ashes. Valentino thus gained new wisdom: the knowledge that there is no shame in accepting and even loving one’s errors, only further reinvigoration of the mind. By applying that wisdom he showed that irony and sportsmanship can magically change reality. Valentino is the eternal youth; in his heart devils are transformed into angels that place everything that surrounds him at his disposal as if the whole world were a part of his astounding riches. The moderation and sacrifice of the Portugal GP, his hot-on-the-heels pursuit of Casey Stoner in Australia without attempting a single passing manoeuvre, his conquest of the world championship title in the rain of Malaysia, beating rival Jorge Lorenzo fair and square and gaining the podium after clocking the fastest lap, all prove that Valentino can enter and exit reality with a simplicity that borders on the playful. This, then, is his new knowledge: the folly of wisdom. This thought thrills me, almost moves me. It leads me to write what I wish I’d added to the interview that this champion of champions gave me as a preface to my recent book Grand Prix College, published at the start of the 2009 championship. …“Passion is a blinding fire, a ferocious, insatiable beast that, indifferent to what lies at stake, demolishes all enemies with unstoppable power. Its audaciousness is so great as to be favoured by luck at every turn. Actions driven by passion have a special intensity, whether one is fighting dragons or wiping away a grain of dust. As experience and victories accumulate, however, an inner voice inevitably begins to ask the reasons for the gods’ benevolence. Passion can pretend not to hear that question, but once the question is posed nothing can be the same and if the question grows in volume it may drown out even passion itself. So to weaken the spectre of fate and replace luck with one’s ‘own’ luck, passion joins forces with moderation to give rise to wisdom. To test this new sentiment blossoming in Valentino’s heart the gods sent him, after the fall in Indianapolis, the darkness of Portugal, the doubt of Australia and the strength to glimpse a blue sky and a rainbow amidst the raindrops of Malaysia. Wisdom slides thought in between passion and action, launches an open-eyed challenge against destiny, curbs the explosive force of passion and bears the heavy weight of delay. Born as the friend of fortune, Valentino’s wisdom wanders far from reason, subtly creating the conditions for the genesis of further good luck – yet like all matters of the heart it is so ambivalent that any attempt to explain it inevitably has the ring of folly.” [photo: Milagro/Studiozac]
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