Re: Can anyone explain this to me? Certainly not Julian...

"pierre-bonneau" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I never seen Mladin and I don't know him.
> But I remember some years ago on the 900cbr mailing list, a group of guys
> who used to follow the AMA races and they had produced a special T-shirt
> with someting like" anybody but mat". They had a lot of stories about the
> bad behavior of Mladin with the other riders on the track and were really
> disliking him. Probably for some good reasons.

I think that was all about his rather salty personality. At the last AMA
round at PPIR in '99, when it came down to Mat and Ben B. for the
championship, he did get in Ben's way some in his last attempt to unseat Mat
from Pole, which was worth a valuable point. The AMA ended up docking Mat
the point, but Ben didn't get it either, and Kenny Roberts, who was there
that weekend, called it, "a good move". . There was a lot of crap about
that, particularly with Mat complaining about all the slow guys getting in
the way all year. Mat also had a number of run-ins with the AMA in those
days, about a host of issues, and even as disliked as the AMA is, he didn't
come off well to a lot of people, who probably felt he was just operating in
his self-interest.

On the other hand, he fits perfectly into Julian's definition of a great
racer, which he applied to Rossi recently: "To win world championships and
be the best in the world, you have to be good at all of it. Not just on the
track on the last corner but in negotiating the best deal, attracting the
best people round you, putting in the testing time, getting the factory to
give you what you need, making sure there's enough money by attracting the
sponsors, doing mindfucks on the other riders and on and on." You could
hardly describe Mladin better, except in two areas. Since leaving ARRC he's
never had the best base machine for SB (except maybe this year, although
that's debatable, ands he certainly had been able to squeeze more out of the
Suzuki 750 than anyone else), and he hasn't been able to find the right deal
to apply his talents to a world championship. In the current edition of
RoadRacerX Dave Sadowski is asked who he thinks is the best roadracer of all
time, and he says Mladin. I don't necessarily agree with everything Sadowski
says, but that's pretty high praise.

Then there's the recent article at RRW that some here might have missed -
"Champion Mladin Overcame Epstein-Barr In 2003, Or, Proof That He Is The
Toughest Man We Have Ever Met". In it Mat says, " "I didn't think anything
else of it until Laguna on Saturday afternoon after the AMA race and I could
hardly get off the bike from fatigue. I said to my wife that something is
wrong. As everybody is aware I pulled out of the WSB second race. It was in
mine and the other competitors' best interest that I did this as about 10
laps into the first race things started to happen that were a little scary,
double vision, etc. I actually struggled to hold myself up under braking and
just felt like lying on the tank. I went and had all the usual bloodwork and
stuff done and was told that I have Epstein-Barr." I mention that for those
who still think that Sunday's results are all they need to know about
Mladin.

On a more personal level, Mladin is friends with Doug Chandler, and Kurtis
Roberts can't stand him - that's a good enough measure for me...