The Epitome of Success Is Choosing to Get Back Up After You Fall
Wayne Rainey is a name surely all motorcycle enthusiasts know. He was a Grand Prix motorcycle road racer who won three 500cc World Championships and one Daytona 200 before the world saw the end of his career on September 5, 1993, at the Italian Grand Prix. 2017 marks the 24th anniversary of the tragic incident.
(Images:Moto America)
His first motorcycle was a Honda Cub. It was too tall for his six year-old frame, however, so his father placed a seat right where the fuel tank met the underbone, the handlebars way above him and the seat he was on continuously hitting him in the back.
His recollection of his first ride on the Cub paints an adorable, if not foreboding, picture: a little Wayne running out crying after wheeling the motorcycle into his father’s cabinets who originally instructed him to keep his foot on the shifter while giving it a little gas before finally releasing it. Maybe he released the gas too early, we’re not sure. He came back, though, which was all that mattered.
(Images:Moto America)
As young as he was, that was probably the first time he had to learn to get back up when he fell down – a valuable lesson that, little did he know, would literally make or break his career.
In the ’93 season of the Italian GP at Misano, history repeated itself.
Rainey was in the lead until he was braking for Turn 1 and put the front wheel off line a few inches. He recovered but with a leaner angle than befpre. As he stepped on the gas, he lost his side grip and the rear end went out of control, throwing Rainey in front of the bike at least 100 mph over. He flipped through the air, landed in the sand trap and damaged his spine where he was then helicoptered away to a hospital near Rimini – in the Emilia-Romagna region where the race was happening.
Images (Pinterest)
Despite the multiple injuries he suffered, Rainey continued his GP story with the backbone of someone who has previously learned to not let a fall deter his future.
As the crash left him paralyzed from the chest down, he became a team owner instead, managing domestic and international race teams and was one of the creative contributors for the birth of MotoAmerica.
“You either adapt or you die,” Rainey said on a recent interview with Cycle World. “You can whine about it or pull your pants up like a big boy.”
His 10-month-old son, he mentioned, was his source of inspiration and strength to get better. “I had to be strong for him,” he said. “I had to show him that his dad’s going to be challenged, but everyone is challenged in their own way, every single day.”
Just as Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.”