STONER ALERT!

Home-schooled, shy and intensely private, Aussie CASEY STONER wasn't meant to be a motorcycle superstar, let alone a World Champion. Swept up in one of racing's most intense rivalries, he remains MotoGP's greatest-ever giant killer. We take a look at his illustrious career...

- DARRYL FLACK

In 2007 Casey Stoner became Australia’s youngest-ever world grand prix champion aged 21. He secured 45 career grand prix victories across 125, 250 and MotoGP to sit second behind Mick Doohan’s record 54 wins. When you delve deeper into Stoner’s rivalry with nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi, he outscored the great Italian on every key measure from race wins and poles to fastest laps and podium finishes.

From 2006 to 2012 Stoner secured38 grand prix victories to Rossi’s 26, not forgetting Casey’s rookie year was winless aboard a satellite 990cc Honda RC211V. He also scored most of his wins– 23–on the unwinnable Ducati, a bike Rossi failed to put on the top step in two years of trying. They each secured two MotoGP championships in the seven seasons they swapped paint. Across all key measures based on percentage of race starts, Casey finished 39 per cent ahead of Rossi. It is a stunning statistic that many Rossi fans will have trouble reconciling, but there it is in black and white. Mano a mano, Casey Stoner was by far the better performed rider of the two.

When Casey retired, veteran MotoGP correspondent Colin Young wrote what many were thinking: ‘In Stoner’s seven seasons in MotoGP he dismantled the myth that Valentino Rossi was an untouchable genius”. After Stoner won his maiden MotoGP  championship in 2007, five-time 500cc world champ Mick Doohan made the point. ‘Casey’s gone head-to-head with Valentino Rossi, one of the greatest riders of all time, and come out on top, so there’s nothing lucky about it. To put it in context, what Casey has done would be like a 21-year-old Aussie kid beating Tiger Woods at golf or Roger Federer at tennis.’ Fire and ice, Stoner and Rossi were polar opposites.