The sky is blue, the Pope is Catholic, bears do shit in the woods and haters are gonna hate… four certainties in life, the latter of which is perhaps a more depressingly concise surmising of a social society that can air their pleasures and grievances to a global audience at the flick of a finger.
It’s certainly not unusual when it comes to motorcycle racing because, by its very definition, it is a competition and a rivalry, not just among the riders themselves but the armies they Captain as a consequence.
However, few armies in sport are as huge or as vocal as Valentino Rossi’s disciples, which is why you probably wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. We’d say Marc Marquez here but the Spaniard seems to enjoy being something of a pantomime villain…
However, on this occasion Joan Mir’s getting the rather nasty end of the stick after pulling off arguably the overtake of the season with a sublime last lap pass on Rossi during the San Marino MotoGP, in so doing upstaging his supposed team leader Suzuki team-mate Alex Rins who spent several laps being unable to do the same.
Having only just taken fourth from Rins himself, Mir had one opportunity to prise the podium from Rossi’s grasp and did so beautifully by slotting his Suzuki into a perfect GSX-RR shaped hole to snatch the podium.
To Rossi’s credit, he didn’t risk it all for both by allowing him any more than was necessary but Mir’s inch-perfect - actually, millimetre-perfect - overtake was as sweet as you could imagine. If you haven’t seen it, marvel in the video here he posted to Instagram.
However, Mir has inadvertently (not that he probably cares) pissed off the Rossi faithful in the process, as some of these rather worrying comments suggest - you’ll need to scroll down as Instagram’s algorithm promotes the nice, well-liked comments towards the top.
Granted, the late change of position denied Rossi a 200th GP podium at his home circuit (though he has another chance this coming weekend) and prevented a 1-2-3 VR46 Academy podium lock out that followed on from a 1-2 for his Sky Italia Racing team in Moto2, but it’s a bit much. Then again what do you expect?
Rossi may have been disappointed, but we don’t think he’d ultimately approve of this reaction!
