moto31

Shooting for the major league - Amazingly, for once the Moto crew all met up at the Channel tunnel on time. Blissy was, as always, pushing it to the limit in his automatic Rover with the Carpenters’ greatest hits blaring from his speakers, but we made it. As I was driving the shiny new Moto VW Transporter along the E40 to Valkenswaard and the in-vehicle conversation had descended into the uncharted waters of the ways of the fairer sex (I wish I’d had my dictaphone on for that one!), I received a text from a foreign number. “You are officially invited to dinner with Youthstream president Guiseppe Luongo this Saturday”, it said.

Shooting for the major league - Amazingly, for once the Moto crew all met up at the Channel tunnel on time. Blissy was, as always, pushing it to the limit in his automatic Rover with the Carpenters’ greatest hits blaring from his speakers, but we made it. As I was driving the shiny new Moto VW Transporter along the E40 to Valkenswaard and the in-vehicle conversation had descended into the uncharted waters of the ways of the fairer sex (I wish I’d had my dictaphone on for that one!), I received a text from a foreign number. “You are officially invited to dinner with Youthstream president Guiseppe Luongo this Saturday”, it said.

I was so taken a’back that I interrupted a conversation that had by then ventured onto assessing the substantial benefits of swinging to announce the news. Incredibly it overwhelmed the current subject matter – which was probably a good thing as it was getting to the point where we were finding things out about each other that would’ve been better left unknown!

“Wonder what all that’s about?” I asked. “Maybe he’s hunted me down for cutting that corner when I qualified at Kester back in the day?!”

“Maybe it is or maybe he wants to keep his enemies close,” says Blissy. Now at this juncture I’d like to point out that what Blissy meant - very much tongue-in-cheek in the current mx political climate - is the press in general, not me personally. Other than simply saying ‘hello’ I’d never really had a proper discussion to Guiseppe up until then, in fact I still haven’t. However it did get me thinking what it was all about quite a bit, well until later and a night-out in Eindhoven at least. Mattard and Big Dunc dragged me off to what he described as an ‘80s bar, which to me means an ‘80s themed bar. In actual fact it was a modern bar but everyone in it was still living in the ‘80s, particularly Doreen from Birds of Feather who was propping up the bar!

And after that I was really looking forward to Saturday’s dinner! Guiseppe wasted no time at all in letting us selected journalists know why we were there. It was to announce his new masterplan and for us to give some feedback before the official announcement the next day. So what’s the deal?

The FIM Pro-Am Team world cup, that’s what. You can find out in more detail about what that means in this issue’s ‘Headstock’ pages, but basically it’s a plan to get the manufactures more involved. Effectively Luongo has come up with a MXoN for manufacturers rather than countries and you know what, I really like the idea. And that’s not because I was wined and dined (although I have to say that didn’t do any harm!). If I thought it was piss-poor idea I’d say so.

He may have his critics but on this occasion I think Guiseppe has taken a big step forward in trying to unify motocross and broadening its worldwide appeal for the better. In principle it can work, but it isn’t going to be easy and it’s going to take a lot of work but for the good of beautiful game everyone will benefit. So I don’t mind tipping my glass to that – well I had too, Mr. Luongo was paying! Fair play.

- Jeff

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