Max Biaggi battling with Valentino Rossi and Marco Melandri in 2005 (Photo: Honda Pro Images)
The Day “A Very Little Mosquito” Stung Max
Over the years Max Biaggi has had run-ins with many riders -- most famously when Valentino Rossi delivered something more than a slap to Biaggi’s cheek on the steps up to the podium at the Circuit of Catalunya in 2001. On that occasion a row caused by Rossi’s then manager led to an altercation as the top three riders, each accompanied by his handlers, climbed the stairway to the podium. Very few witnesses saw what actually happened. What is known is that Rossi got in one punch before security separated them.
After taking statements from Spanish security workers, then FIM President Francesco Zerbi delivered a written reprimand to both riders.
When Max appeared with Valentino in the post-race press conference he got in the best line.
There was a spot of blood on his cheek from Rossi’s punch and Max was asked, to the enjoyment of the room, what that was. Max, touched the spot, looked at the blood on the tip of his finger and said in deadpan, “I don’t know; I think I have been bitten by a very small mosquito.”
Max has a reputation of carving up his rivals in practice and even on the cool down laps after sessions. When he was Nicky Hayden’s teammate in Repsol Honda, 2005, he T-boned the Kentuckian not on the racetrack but right in front of the Honda pits in preseason testing. Max apologized plausibly and explained that he had not realized that Nicky was about to pull out. (I believe him, of course, but I am not sure Nicky ever fully did.)
Things got so heated between Nicky and Max that, in the best Owensboro tradition, Nicky offered to just have a plain old-fashioned fistfight in the rider’s dressing room in Qatar. Max, I am assured, walked into the room to find Earl, Nicky’s dad, and Nicky waiting and Nicky ready to go far more than apply a couple of slaps to the cheek. Max, craftily surveying the situation, weighing up the odds against the muscular ex-dirt tracker and perhaps even thinking of Repsol Honda’s image, stepped forward offering to shake hands.
