If you didn’t know better, Marc Márquez could easily be mistaken for an elite downhill skier. A tell-tale winter tan and pearl-white smile, plus a deep, cheekbone-lean fitness point to a life dedicated to shaving tenths of a second on the slopes. There’s self-confidence, too, a quickness to the eyes, and, despite being only 5ft 7in tall, a powerful athleticism that separates him from the throng of holiday skiers in the restaurant.
Márquez is eating breakfast high in the Dolomites at Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, ahead of a sun-up descent into the valley, but his focus is securely locked on another high-risk, high-speed pursuit: MotoGP, the pinnacle of motorcycle racing and the sport that until 2020 the Spaniard dominated in a way that not even Max Verstappen has yet managed in Formula 1.
“When I was 20 years old I would crash two or three times when skiing, trying to go fast,” he says in fluent English. “But, at 31, I realise what an injury is, what an injury can do. So I take my time, I am calm on the skis and take risks only on the racetrack – which is my job.”
Márquez is a man who truly knows about injuries and risk. He has a staggering 62 race wins and six MotoGP world titles – just one fewer than his old foe and long-retired legend, Valentino Rossi. He has immense wealth and global fame, including a delirious fanbase that erupts whenever his number 93 machine emerges from its pit box. But in 2020, while at the peak of his superpowers and riding for Honda, Marquez broke his humerus so badly there was talk he would lose his right arm.
Following a four-year fightback punctuated by more crash-induced injuries, recurring diplopia (double vision), immobility issues, infections and multiple operations, he is finally fully fit again and installed in the red-hot Ducati Lenovo factory team.
His bike this year will be the fastest and most violent racing motorcycle on the planet: a Ducati Desmosedici GP25, some 300 horsepower of brain-frying acceleration and technical wizardry – a machine that gives him every chance of equalling Rossi’s seven world titles.
As we chat, it’s impossible for me, even as a former Isle of Man TT racer, to imagine what his body – and his mind – have endured during the last four years, or to understand why he wants to do it all again.
“Sometimes even I ask why I keep going,” he says. “But motorbikes are my passion. If you ask what is my hobby? I say ‘motorbikes’. Riding motorbikes is my biggest hobby and it has become my job. I’m super lucky to have this job and I want to keep going.”
Every MotoGP rider on the grid can do things on a motorcycle that defy both gravity and belief, but even his fiercest rivals concede that Marquez can take it further. He finds gaps that don’t exist, extracts pole-setting lap times from uncompetitive machinery, rescues a crash on his inside knee and elbow in a way that has changed the face of the sport. But with that ability to ride so close to disaster, inevitably, come crashes – more pain, more rehab and the risk of permanent damage to an already brutalised body.
“On the bike, I take full risk every time because that is my job,” explains Márquez. “When you are crashing, sliding down the racetrack, you are only thinking about getting to the spare bike in the pits. Sometimes you understand the crash, sometimes no. But we are not scared about crashing. If you understand the crash, you braked too late for example, and you know why you crash, you can push again straight away.”
As in Formula 1, rider safety in MotoGP is far advanced of what it was just 20 years ago. The adoption of innovations such as airbag riding suits has unquestionably made the sport less dangerous, too. Crashing at speeds likely to get you locked up if you risked them on the M1 motorway, however, remains a part of the game and, unlike four-wheel racing, there is no hiding place when it happens.
Just ask Jorge Martin, the reigning world champion who, after missing out on a seat with the works Ducati team to Márquez elected to join Aprilia, suffered a nasty hand injury in a pre-season crash – a setback on Tuesday means Martin will sit out this weekend round in a sizeable blow to his title defence.
In practice for the 2022 Indonesian GP, Marquez experienced a crash so frightening BT Sport made a 30-minute documentary about that one split-second of drama.
At the German Grand Prix the following season he fell, at speed, tumbling and sliding before limping away, no fewer than five times during the weekend. The Honda RC213V he had for years ridden to all those titles was no longer there for him. Instead, when Márquez tried to match the pace of the now dominant Ducatis, it simply bit him, and the ultimate competitor looked broken.
In despair, the man from Cervera, an hour west of Barcelona, thought long and hard about quitting the sport, but in 2024 shocked the racing world by taking a sizeable pay cut and signing for the family-run Gresini Racing team. Riding a year-old Ducati GP23 alongside brother Alex he rediscovered his love for MotoGP and took three hugely popular wins.
‘Now if I take a win, it’s like a present’
“Five years ago, before the injuries, winning was the normal thing,” says Márquez. “Now I realise that winning is not a normal thing. After all the injuries and four or five long operations in the arm, now if I take a win, it’s like a present. I have had a great career, and now I’m back to pushing the limits to try to improve. Last year I did the most difficult thing in my career and that was to come back from those injuries and win again with Gresini.”
It was enough to earn Márquez the prized seat alongside twice world champion, 28-year-old Italian Francesco ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia in the Ducati Lenovo team for 2025. And again the parallels with F1 are unavoidable.
For Ducati, read Ferrari, that other iconic Italian marque that races in red, and for Márquez read Lewis Hamilton, the standout talent of his generation who is also making the move to an institutional manufacturer.
While Hamilton hopes his move to Maranello will deliver an all-time record eighth world title, Márquez has his sights set on levelling Rossi’s seven, after which only Giacomi Agostini’s eight premier class championships will stand between the Spaniard and becoming the undisputed two-wheel GOAT (Greatest of all Time). And the first job on both to-do lists will be to try to put their younger team-mates in their place, which is far from guaranteed, starting with this weekend’s curtain-raising Grand Prix of Thailand.
“Marc is a very smart guy,” says Bagnaia, with a perfectly straight bat. “He will adapt to everything in the factory team. I think together we will do a good job. To have a multiple world champion as a team-mate makes me more motivated.”
Márquez, meanwhile, is less guarded. “Every rider has a strong point and some small weak points,” he says. “For sure Pecco has been riding for five years for Ducati, is two times world champion for Ducati, and he knows very well the team, and the bike, so I need to learn from him.
“The ambition is always to win. You try to be faster and improve, always. But before if I did not win on a weekend, I was in a bad mood for two or three days after. Now, if I do not win, I say OK, I tried 100 per cent and pushed very hard. If I win, I celebrate. If I do not win, then Monday is just another day.
“Last year on the Gresini Ducati I found the perfect atmosphere to enjoy my racing again,” he says. “To make that comeback I needed to feel no pressure, and the whole team was super friendly. Now as a factory rider I have more responsibility and have to be in the top-three positions on the podium in every race and fighting for the championship. But let’s see what we can do this year.”
And off he goes to the red run for his first tussle of the year with Bagnaia. Márquez may be happy to finish safely in second today but come the first race of the MotoGP season in Thailand in March, things will be very different.