In an exclusive interview in issue no.
49 of Motosprint magazine Andrea Dovizoso talked about his life-long rivalry and relationship with the late Marco Simoncelli, who he knew from the age of six.
The two riders were completely different character wise, even as children when they were competing against each other, Simoncelli was able to laugh off defeat, even if he was bothered by it while the more serious Dovizioso would hide under the table in his family’s camper crying.
Dovizioso admitted that despite Marco’s on-track aggressiveness and instinctiveness that over the years had rubbed him and then the other top riders the wrong way, there was still respect between them.
The Yamaha Tech3 rider also admitted that when Marco died at Sepang he hadn’t talked to Simoncelli’s dad for over a year due to the rivalry between the two families (even the two fathers would butt heads occasionally), but when he visited the Simoncelli family on the day that the coffin arrived, everything that had happened in the past was put aside and he had to finally accept that Marco was gone and this touched him more deeply than he had ever expected.
So deeply that Dovizioso decided to get another tattoo and this latest one tries to explain his thoughts, “After what happened, here is to Sic my thoughts in a Polynesian tattoo with the sun god (life), the frigate bird (destiny) and a gecko.
” While words on the tattoo say, ‘I am the master of my destiny, but only destiny knows the end of my journey.
’Dovizioso isn’t the only Italian rider to remember Marco with ink, life-long friend Mattia Pasini has tattooed on the inside of his left wrist a large 58 and the word Sic that he had done just before Simoncelli’s funeral.