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• Portrait: Casey Stoner The dominator of the 2011 MotoGP season

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Casey Stoner – MotoGP star

Portrait: Casey Stoner
The dominator of the 2011 MotoGP season

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A country egg at heart, MotoGP star Casey Stoner likes to hunt in his free time in the outback. But is he now a hunter or the hunted in the Honda factory team this season??

Uwe Seitz

09/29/2011

gngpix.com

Away from the racetrack, Stoner withdraws and enjoys life in the outback.

Everyone needs balance in life. Casey Stoner’s job is all about speed, stress and complex technology. That’s why he does the exact opposite off the racetrack. Nowhere is the 2007 Moto GP world champion doing better than out in the Australian bush, camping, fishing and hunting. “I settle down as far as I can”, says Stoner on the shores of Lake Glenbawn, about a five-hour drive northwest of Sydney, deep in the land of the kangaroos. “Then I go fishing. I can completely forget about racing and it clears my head. You also get to incredibly beautiful places. I am totally enthusiastic about lakes and rivers. The nicest thing is a very secluded place to camp somewhere by a river – unbelievable. The lonelier the better. Then I’ll catch a trout and grill a nice dinner. Or I’ll just jump in and take a bath. My heart is in country life.”

Another passion of the Australian is hunting with a bow. “I started with a short hunting bow. Now I’ll take a simple longbow. No aiming device, nothing, totally old school. I like this because it’s more of a challenge than the gun and it’s fairer to the animal. The stalking itself is the very best part of this hunt. You first have to find out a lot about the animals – where and when they eat. Then you have to pay attention to the wind direction, from which direction you have to sneak up, where the best cover is and how the sun is. If the sun shines on your face, they will see you, you have no chance. If you go wild boar, it’s vital for survival, they are pretty aggressive. If you outsmart them, that’s a great feeling.”

As soon as the fresh season gives him the time, Stoner has plans for a bigger tour and wants to leave all civilization behind: “I want to go on a big tour with a couple of boys on horses. Fishing rods, tents and the bow come on a pack animal and then it’s four or five days through the bush. We don’t want to take any food with us, we just want to live from hunting and fishing. ”You can’t get more old school than this, it’s like Australia in the 19th century.

Although Stoner likes to distance himself radically from his everyday life, he is fully aware of the parallels to his 21st century profession. Both have to do with hunting and being hunted. “That’s true, although you always want to be the hunted when racing”, he grins broadly. “In fact, when you are in the middle of the crowd, the first corner feels just like the last moment in the forest before you fire the arrow. The eyes are everywhere, you check all eventualities. Is there enough space to go here, there? When is the best moment to strike? Like hunting. Is the wind good? Does nobody see me? What if…? With one huge difference – there is this incredible calm when hunting.”

But the young Aussie sometimes needs the action kick outside of this 300 km / h cockfight, which he frankly admits to being “one goes off”. Stoner recently discovered a more dangerous type of fishing for himself – no problem in Australia. “It’s really fun in Darwin, there are crocodiles in the water everywhere. Your heart is racing all the time. All attention is paid to the surface of the water so that something doesn’t suddenly snap at you. Most people like to feel safe, but we race to get the adrenaline pumping. Fear is adrenaline, and that’s exactly what happens when the river is full of crocodiles. You can’t switch off and have to be on your guard at all times.”

2Snap

Good face to the bad game: Casey Stoner hates PR appearances and the big hype.

Stoner was a country boy for most of his life. Born on October 16, 1985 on Australia’s Gold Coast, his parents moved south to the Hunter Valley vineyards when he was nine to pursue little Casey’s racing career. “The competition in Queensland was no longer good enough. I won everything so we moved to New South Wales. They didn’t spank my bum there, but it was much more difficult. “

When he was 16 months, he sat alone on a motorcycle for the first time. “I pushed that old PW50 up the hill and rolled down with it, over and over again. Then someone sat on the back for ages while I practiced the throttle grip. When I was three I was allowed to drive it alone. From then on I practically didn’t do anything else as long as there was fuel in the house. ”He drove his first race when he was four. By the age of 13, Stoner had already won 41 national dirt track titles. The fast, rumbling dirt track shaped Stoner, just like other Aussie legends Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner. As a child, Klein-Casey drove a dozen races per day, most of which lasted seconds rather than minutes. This form of racing therefore requires particular aggressiveness, dedication and the will to attack immediately. That explains Stoner’s talent for getting the most out of a motorcycle from the first lap. An ability that amazes the competitors every time.

Convinced of their son’s talent, the Stoners sold all their belongings and moved to England to attack in street sports – in Australia Casey would have had to wait two years for a license. In 2000, his rookie year, he won his first title on asphalt and became the British Aprilia 125 champion. Two years later he was in the Grand Prix. The following year Stoner won his first race there, rose to MotoGP in 2006 and took the crown in the premier class in 2007. Today he has won more GPs than Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Rainey or Freddie Spencer.

His parents, who scraped together all the toads for their boy’s career, now own a farm near Lake Glenbawn with 2,400 acres of pasture and 1,000 cattle. Casey is always there when he’s in Australia. There is no internet, and the nearest store is a good 40-minute drive away – perfect for a guy who loves to get away from modern life. “I’m a bit contradictory because I love motorcycles so much, but everything around them doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t need television either, I’d rather be outside and work on the farm. ”His retirement plan is clear:“ I come here, run the farm and hopefully have a few children. ”

Stoner currently lives most of the time with his wife Adriana on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. “We like it there very much. It’s green everywhere and we live right next to a stream that meanders through the mountains. I can go out the door and catch trout right away. “

They moved there a few years ago when Casey was going crazy in Monaco. At that time he also went hunting: all over his luxury apartment he had nailed targets on the wall and was sneaking through the booth with an air pistol. He can’t stand city life, just doesn’t like the hustle and bustle and hates the limelight, which explains his strange relationship with fans and the media. Although things have gotten better over the years, he is a much more open-minded person apart from the public. “Fame is not my thing. I’m not comfortable with that. Lots of drivers, especially the Europeans, get on just fine with it, they don’t mind the attention. I, on the other hand, run as far as possible. Of course I move in a business that lives off of it – I have to deal with that. ”Stoner is a MotoGP rider because he loves racing, nothing else. “The rest of it is grueling for me,” he says, always looking forward to the moment on the race weekend when he folds down the visor and lets the clutch come on – just him and his motorcycle against the rest of the world.

Ronny Lekl

2007: The Australian becomes MotoGP world champion in the premier class for the second year.

Not least because of this, he changed the manufacturer. Ducati, but above all the main sponsor Marlboro, demand a lot of PR engagement from the drivers. “That got me down. It was the exact opposite of the life I always dreamed of as a world champion. ”And there were other reasons:“ It had nothing to do with Ducati or Valentino Rossi who negotiated with Ducati. They only really tried to get him when I was sure of my departure. It was that Lorenzo thing in 2009 that got me excited. At Ducati they keep crying that they don’t have enough money. But they offered Lorenzo twice what I got. That is a lie. The people I worked with directly – Filippo Preziosi and the motorcycle-related guys – were great. But the bosses tell you one thing and do the other, ”complains the Qatar winner. “I don’t care that much about the money, but I was miles away from the ones I beat all the time – Rossi, Lorenzo, Pedrosa. I had enough. Now I’m much closer to my market value. “

Stoner also knows that Honda can put more money into development than anyone else. “Ducati doesn’t have the money to develop big,” he adds. But the last bit of his “Pro Honda” decision goes back to his childhood days. Since the age of five, Stoner has watched every race his Australian hero Mick Doohan races on the NSR 500. He adored the iron-hard, five-time world champion. “I dreamed of following in Mick’s footsteps on the Repsol Honda team.”

He admires the drivers of that era more than anything: “Back then it was all about racing – Doohan, Schwantz, Rainey, Gardner, Lawson, not half as much bullshit as it is today. That was real life. ”Doohan and Co. drove with no mercy or traction control. Stoner would like to ban these driving aids if he could. For a 26 year old, it’s remarkably traditional. “I would like to drive without it. When I won the title, I was bombarded with gossip that I was the next generation driver who only trusted technology. Slowly people are realizing that I use them less than the others. I like it that way, the bike feels so much better to me. “

Stoner was instantly quick with the new Honda RC 212V, won the season opener in Qatar and has legitimate hopes for the title: “The Honda turns so much better that my lines are completely different now,” he states with satisfaction. “There are a few things that the Ducati felt better about, but overall, the Honda is a lot better. Honda is very unhappy not to have won a title for so many years and I feel the same way. So I’m going out there and want to change that. ”The hunting season has definitely started.

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