WSBK and MotoGP - a big weekend.

[Pterodactyl_imp]

Spain and Italy both have excellent grass roots programs for road racers and more importantly the people of those countries care as much about road racing as Americans care about Nascar. Lorenzo, Marquez, Pedrosa and Rossi are like gods in their given countries.

America doesn't give a hoot about any form of motorcycle racing. Will be a long time, if ever, before we see another American World GP Champion.

That's a replica of the situation here. Four different football codes, cricket, and other sports (or entertainment, depending on your viewpoint) are of much greater interest to the general public than motorcycle racing. It is possible for an AFL club game in Melbourne to attract 80000 spectators. Which eclipses a weekend at PI for an international event and our local events would be fortunate to have numbers in the thousands. OK, there's not much else to do in Melbourne (dons flak jacket), but attitudes to motorcycling in OZ have changed over the last decade or so. Before every family had two cars, and a colour TV , bikes were part of the background to life and competitive biking was of interest to a significant part of the population. Speedway tracks were a part of every city's infrastructure and of most country towns. Speedway and road racing were well attended and its men and machines were heroes to both young and old. At some point motorcycling became "dangerous" and, in the public eye at least, less than respectable. Thank you Johnny (aka Marlon Brando). Motorcycling is once again regaining its popularity but in a different way. Cashed up "boomers", city dwellers who can't find a car parking spot and the café set would make up the majority of bike and scoot sales. A recent OZ survey put the average age of motorcyclists at over 40. I contributed greatly to this result I'm sure. PI is reasonably well attended, even since Casey retired, but I would say a good proportion of the spectators would not follow the season through. If Jack Miller comes good the sport would benefit. Anyway, this sort of philosophising is best continued over a cup of tea, so let the weekend roll on.

Cheers