‘Valentine. Las mil caras de Rossi’ is an autobiographical book about the life of the legendary and controversial Italian pilot written by the editor-in-chief of Sports of El País, Nadia Tronchoni. The story mixes the historical part with the data, is full of anecdotes and has authoritative voices about the life and successes of the seven-time MotoGP champion. All this based on the first-person testimony of a journalist who has traveled half the world narrating the exploits of the Italian pilot.
“He spoke with most of the key people in his life,” explains his partner Oriol Puigdemont, presenter of the act. Tronchoni, who has woven the story since the controversial 2015 World Cup in Sepang when Rossi “showed his only weakness and left a very bad image”, he points out some key characters, such as Jorge Lorenzo, who was his partner and rival; the CEO of Dorna, Carmelo Ezpeleta; or the pilot’s best friend, Alessio Uccio. “Through him I discovered the giant value of Rossi”, says the author.
The book also delves into the rivalry between Rossi and Márquez, whose high point was in that Sepang race, but it started earlier. The author recounts an episode on the dirt circuit that Rossi has on his property and how the Spanish pilot challenged him in his own house. “Rossi invited Márquez, but everything ends badly because they interpret that the Spaniard wanted to humiliate them. Tito Rabat was also there. Márquez asked for a Honda and did not stop doing the fastest lap of the circuit… That was the turning point.”
A chapter, like many others, that are revealed in an essential book about an athlete as singular as iconic who had “people skills, he was charismatic, he’s like Nadal, he always comes back and never dies”, says the author, who acknowledges that she has taken as literary references two books based on tennis, the one that John Carlin wrote about Rafa Nadal and the biography of André Agassi (‘Open’).