Valentino Rossi has become the university of motorcycling

The next time they draw up a ranking of Italian universities, they will have to put it up there with Bocconi, Politecnico di Milano, Sapienza di Roma, Normale di Pisa: Valentino Rossi’s Academy produces champions, just as our main universities produce managers. The VR46 Riders Academy, founded in Tavullia about ten years ago by the Doctor, in Argentina led another of his students to victory in the MotoGP. Marco Bezzecchi known as #SimplyTheBez is the latest arrival among Valentino’s children who are not yet as many as those of Varenne, but we are close. A son who looks a lot like another Marco, that Simoncelli who is a bit the origin of the Vale school which has now become a university of speed.

Marco asked Vale to help him improve. To go to shoot together to suck some secrets. They had fun while putting the theory of communicating vessels into practice. A little of Vale’s knowledge ended up in Marco’s curls. Until October 23, 2011. What he had begun to do with the Sic, however, he liked. Training with someone else enjoyed him, served him and allowed him to try to leave a legacy on the track where he knew he couldn’t last forever even if the temptation to try was strong. He already knew where to put himself in the chair. The Ranch was already there ready in 2013, when the idea of ​​the Academy began to become reality. “Let’s see if what worked for me also works for others,” Rossi thought. There was only to fill it with pupils.

The first was Franco Morbidelli, then came Pecco Bagnaia who is world champion today and then one after the other here is his brother Luca Marini, Andrea Migno, Celestino Vietti and, the last winner, Marco Bezzecchi. There were also many others who didn’t finish their studies, so to speak. There was a time when they could have signed up for a football championship: there were eleven of them. The Doctor began teaching youngsters when he was still racing. In practice he raised his own opponents so much so that when they began to beat him he came to say: “I’m raising snakes in my breasts, perhaps creating this Academy wasn’t a good idea”. He said it jokingly, like Valentino. But he wrinkled him a little. He had started with the support of Sky as the main sponsor to let them race in Moto 3, then slowly the Academy too had become aware of his strength and in the end he arrived in MotoGP.

Today the riders who grew up in Tavullia have already won three World Championships: Morbidelli in Moto2, Bagnaia in Moto2 and in MotoGP. But winning the championship with a rider born in the house on the bike managed by Uccio would be the best. A bit as if Vale were to win that tenth World Championship that only Marquez’s impropriety denied him.

Managing a pilot costs 70 thousand euros. But the chosen ones do not pay the registration. They transfer 10 percent of their salary to the Academy (since they start collecting at least 50,000 euros). In exchange, they are served in all respects from a managerial and even physical point of view and have around seventy track, road and cross bikes at their disposal. Alessio “Uccio” Salucci, the lifelong friend and Alberto Tebaldi, another eternal travel companion of Vale are the souls of the Valentinian Academy. It is not obvious that you can do business between friends. They do it great.

Vale takes care of the lessons on the track in what was once the Cava and today is a magnificent structure, the Ranch where they learned to fight each other. A lesson that, for example, Bagnaia, Bezzecchi, Morbidelli and Marini put into practice in Saturday’s Sprint Race. From Vale they learned not to give up, but evidently also to win. It was not obvious that a great champion could turn into a professor. Vale, on the other hand, is doing what the Spanish school had done for years: it produces champions by stripping young talents. Italian motorcycling has lost the golden egg, but perhaps it has found the hen that continues to produce them over and over again.