The Real Valentino Rossi
Photographer Don Morley met Valentino Rossi before most. The young Italian was just a babe in arms at the time, being carried round the paddock by proud dad Graziano.
“After taking time out to recover from the head injury he had suffered in a rally car crash, Graziano came back to the paddock to see us all and to show us his new baby,” Morley says. “He was immensely proud of him. Of course, none of us knew then the significance of what that baby would achieve. I remember Graziano greeting me like a long-lost friend and I took some pictures of him proudly holding his little baby boy. And that baby boy was Valentino Rossi.”
Rossi wasn’t quite so cute when Neil Hodgson first encountered him in the paddock. Hodgson was racing an uncompetitive WCM in 500cc Grands Prix at the time he first encountered the noisy, hyperactive kid that was Valentino. “It was like he had ADHD!” Hodgson laughs. “He was sooooo loud, and he had the loudest scooter in the paddock too. And he had really weird hair. This was 1995 when he was racing in the European 125 Championship which had some rounds alongside Grand Prix meetings. He was battling at the front but didn’t particularly stand out to me as a rider, I just always thought, ‘Oh my God, get this kid away from me!’ because he was so noisy. He was
