OK FOR OJ

An achingly beautiful blast from the fast!

- Alan Cathcart

Exactly 20 years ago in 2000, Yamaha enjoyed a especially stellar race season — one that was equally forgettable, though, for its Honda rival. Yamaha blitzed the 250GP world series in a 2000 season dominated by their two riders, Japan’s Shinya Nakano and Frenchman Olivier Jacque aboard a bike that was clearly the class of the field — the Chesterfield-sponsored YZR250 V-twin. However, the outcome of their fight to be crowned world champion was in doubt until the last ten meters of the final lap in the concluding race of the season, in Australia. It was winner take all — whoever won the race also took the title, and after Nakano grabbed the lead from the start at Phillip Island, he was closely shadowed for the entire race by his French teammate, as the duo distanced themselves from Honda’s lead rider, Daijiro Katoh.

It was a risky business, though — had the Yamaha duo wiped each other out in vying for the title, it would have been Katoh and Honda, not Yamaha, who won it. Nakano led this nail-biting two-wheeled game of poker until the two of them exited the last top-gear corner leading onto the Gardner Straight on the final lap, with the chequered flag awaiting them. Then, in a brilliantly judged slipstreaming maneuver, Olivier Jacque wafted past his fellow Yamaha rider to lead across the line by just 0.014sec, to snatch the world title from his teammate after a season in which the two of them had dominated the standings, with eight victories in the sixteen races (three for Jacque, five for Nakano), eight pole positions, 23 visits to the podium and first and second in the championship. Can’t ask for much more, can you?