MotoGP: Another year, another prodigy: Izan Guevara, the boy who didn’t want to play football, Moto3 champion

His parents approached him with a ball -like his brother Aitor-, but he wanted a motorcycle. Now he is the new prodigy of the Balearic school, although his reference was Mrquez, not Lorenzo

“Any 18-year-old kid who wins the Moto3 World Championship has projection, but Izan more. It’s incredible how much he has earned for how little he has worked. I don’t mean it as criticism; it’s a compliment. For the protection of parents or Due to the lack of means, Izan has hardly trained outside the circuits and, despite this, he has always done great. He is pure talent”.

It is the description of Be Guevarathe new prodigy of Spanish motorcycling, of Daniel Vadillo, who was his coach when he was a teenager at the Balearic School of Motorcycling. This Sunday in Australia, with two races remaining to finish the season, Guevara embraced the Moto3 title with a victory; the way of the best. As he later admitted, he thought he had to win, that he wouldn’t celebrate if he didn’t finish in front of him. Sergio Garcia, and, although he had really messed up the numbers, it didn’t matter either. I won, I won, I won and I celebrated with Nico Terol, 125cc champion in 2011, now his coach, disguised as his double. The ‘acting’ remembered Jorge Lorenzowho did something similar in 2015, but when Lorenzo himself on DAZN asked Guevara for his inspiration, he answered without ties: “As a child, I was more than Mrquez“A Majorcan like Lorenzo, raised in his father Chicho’s school, Guevara belongs to no one, hardly even to his parents. Toni y Marga.

“At the age of three or four they signed him up for football, like his brother Aitor [hoy jugador de La Unin de la Primera Regional mallorquina], but he was not interested in the ball. Already then he asked for a motorcycle”, Vadillo recalls for EL MUNDO with the moment in which he met Guevara engraved in his memory. At the age of seven, from Chicho Lorenzo’s school he went to the Balearic School of motorcycling and there was Vadillo, who among others, he had already worked with Joan Mir: “He had a blue mini motorcycle, he was very small, very smiling like now, a restless ass. The talent was already there. In fact, he would say that he has never lost. In the Cradle of Champions he won; in the European Talent Cup he won; in He won the FIM CEV Junior World Championship and now he has won the Moto3 World Championship in his second year”.

the balearic school

A phenomenon practically out of nowhere. After years of dominance by the Catalan school of motorcycling, which still maintains in MotoGP Marc Mrquez, lex Rins or the brothers spread, the Balearic academy makes its way with the minimum: a circuit, Llucmajor, is already there. With Lorenzo and Mir with references, from the island they arrive augusto fernndez, current Moto2 leader, and Guevara, already Moto3 champion. why? “If I tell you, the truth is, I don’t know. We take advantage of the little we have,” summarizes Vadillo, now enrolled in the Leopard team, mentor of Dennis Foggiaone of Guevara’s greatest generational rivals.

The other has been, is and will be Peter Acosta, the other Spanish marvel, the Moto3 champion last year. Both Guevara and Acosta met as rivals as children, in the Cradle of Champions, and they will return to it next year, both in Moto2. Dorna, the organizing company of the World Cup, has spent years, perhaps decades, trying to ensure that its championship is not reduced to a confrontation between Italy and Spain, that there are pilots from other countries in Europe, Asia, hopefully from the United States, but everything is ready because in three or four seasons Guevara and Acosta will fight in MotoGP.

The first, Guevara, with a ‘Carpe Diem’ tattooed on his chest, nicknamed Jordan by his team for his devotion to Jordan Brand clothing – not so much of his own Michael Jordan– and accustomed to doing a handstand to celebrate his victories, he already has the title that will pave the way for him. “His talent is brutal and now we will begin to see how far he can go. Really start working, multiplying his hours on the bike and in the gym, and taking out his full potential,” concludes Vadillo, Izan Guevara’s youth coach, the new prodigy of Spanish motorcycling.