Alex Marquez’s vital role in saving Marc Marquez: “Lots of races, only one life"
Marc was flung into the air in a horrible highside during the warm-up for the Indonesian MotoGP, the latest in a series of physical blows he had sustained in a two-year period.
His new Amazon Prime Video documentary ‘Marc Marquez: ALL IN’ reveals how he planned to defy logic by starting the race shortly after the worst highside of his career, until his brother intervened.
“When I got back to the track I wasn’t seeing double yet,” Marc said in the documentary. “I wanted to race. My brother said: ‘Do not race, man’.”
Marc had already suffered with diplopia, a double-vision issue, as well as arm injuries. The highside in the Mandalika warm-up gave him a concussion, the hospital said at the time.
LCR Honda rider Alex told the documentary: “I saw where he had hit his head. I said: ‘This gives me a bad feeling’. After the warm-up I assumed he wouldn’t race.
“I was in his office and I remember that [crew chief Santi Hernandez] came in - ‘everything is ready’, because that’s his job.
“But in that moment I thought ‘no’. I stood up to him. I said: ‘Look, Marc doesn’t race’. There are a lot of races but only one life. You’d be making a mistake today.
“It seemed like he didn’t want to race but he needed somebody to calm him down and say ‘you don’t have to race’.”
Repsol Honda rider Marc said about his brother: “He said: ‘You can’t go out there, you took a bash out there, it is unfeasible’.
“The diplopia got worse and I said: ‘okay I won’t race’. I had a fall, a hard one, double vision. But it still wasn’t as bad as the other falls.”
The Amazon Prime Video documentary goes on to chart Marc's career-threatening arm surgery last summer and his subsequent comeback.
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
