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I know LG was his brother, just didn’t know if they went into the family side of it and how it affected them overall.
Got the chance to walk the track with him way back in the early 2000s when he raced Havasu WORCS. He was a solid dude, very humble and more than willing to take advice from the experienced off road pros in the group I was with.
I've never met him, and a lot say he's such a good guy, but that interview SCREAMS not much life experience and a sheltered childhood to me.
The amount of times Mike would say something as fact when talking about another rider, such as when he told Ping how and why Langston got hurt at Hangtown. Ping said multiple times "well actually what really happened was...."
Don't get me wrong, it sounds like he's in a decent place in life now and I wish him the best, but it feels like a lot of you are looking at his past through some rose-colored lenses.
-I hope Genova has his Australian spa sales strategy in place - think its gonna be good business.
Pit Row
Not following a holeshot (of course) then Christ knows how many bikes ran over him. That is the worst I have ever seen, way worse that when RV broke his legs in SX. To think he came back from that was a serious show of character.
What a dedicated hard racer that just missed that last step many times.
I agree the Tee shirt blackened his image towards a lot of fans.
The fact that he didn't talk to Jeff for a long time after laser gate, showed how wrong some of us were to lay blame.
Well done Mike and Ping, another great listen/ watch.
There were some very awkward melodramatic «self-pats» on the back too.
One thing that seemed like a theme during the interview, and what I think probably encapsulates the difference between the mindsets of him and the guys who have won so much, is that Mike talked about things like 'winning' practice. He used the term 'winning' for things like that, and I don't recall any of the top guys ever really using that sort of thought process before. I have heard them talking about 'qualifying first' or things like that, but Mike almost sounded like those were huge deals and were as big of a deal as winning an actual race itself.
I kind of wonder if he got settled into that mindset of 'I won practice, now if I get the holeshot I have 2 of 3 (practice, race start, race finish) for the day and can just relax' type of mentality.
Even the guys who never won a ton who have been on Whiskey Throttle never seemed to talk about 'winning' practice the way that it came off for MA.
I hope he does well on his return to racing, he does seem like a good dude overall and I'm sure that he has good intentions, etc. I think that the WT podcast probably moved the needle slightly to the 'like' side for me, but nothing tremendously. If I was at 50/50 before the podcast, then I am at about 50.1/49.9 now.
Hopefully he can race and stay healthy as long as he wants to keep doing it!
I like Mike, but I can't help but think he was stunted over the years by not learning from mistakes... Not taking ownership of situations. Can't learn much that way. Why put a spin on everything? I can only speculate that his dad instilled much of that in him.
Still a badass racer and really, ALWAYS a racer. Feel like he's one of those guys that will be around forever like Dubach.
Ping did a great job of guiding Mike through that one. Can see why he’s not a podcast favourite. He missed the point on a lot of questions, to just go back around and justify his success and happiness in life.
Post a reply to: The Whiskey Throttle Show Mike Alessi