Enjoy Cal while you can: Crutchlow retirement looms

There is no doubt he has a lot of talent, but his greatest assets are determination and bravery. Since he graduated to MotoGP he’s had 137 crashes, during race weekends, which certainly means he’s fallen off a MotoGP bike at least 150 times; crashes in testing included.

“I’ve always been a crasher and that’s the way it is,” he told me a while back.

Indeed. After Crutchlow contested the 2000 and 2001 Aprilia Superteens championship series principal Ian Newton had this to say about him. “Cal’s big thing was always his determination. He would crash his brains out and the crashes didn’t seem to knock him at all. Very, very few guys can do that.”

That’s certainly true. He’s as tough as they come. “A gritty little boxer type – get stuck in and have a go,” added Newton. But there’s no gain without pain. There’s a whole lot of agony in those 150 or so crashes, which is the main reason Crutchlow is considering retirement when his current HRC contract expires at the end of 2020.

“This isn’t about me thinking I’m getting slower, it’s more about my body hurting,” he says. “My body hurts. Not just because of last year’s crash [his 140mph get-off at Phillip Island’s Turn One in October], but in general. I don’t know how long I can keep dealing with that, year in year out, instead of having a bit of a normal life.”

Worst of all are the ongoing nerve problems caused by his huge accident at Phillip Island last October, which left him with a badly mashed right ankle.

“I need one of those stairlifts at home,” he adds. “I think the problem is the metalwork pushing against the nerves and tendons. If you read other people’s experiences of the same injury I had they say it’s wrecked their life and they’ve not had a normal life since. I’m still racing a motorcycle and still living a great life, but I’m in pain. The nerves are really, really hurting me.

“I’ve got three plates and ten screws in there. When I push down it’s so painful you can’t imagine. It feels like raw meat. I can take nerve painkillers, but when I got home last from Australia I stopped taking them because I knew I’d get addicted.

“Earlier this year I had five months when the foot was fantastic. Then since Sachsenring it’s got really bad again. But it’s not just that – my shoulders hurt, my arm hurt and my knees hurt too.

“I want to do normal stuff, I want to take my daughter to school, I want to play with her. I want to be able to walk in a straight line, which I can’t at the moment.”

Crutchlow may be seven years younger than Valentino Rossi, but there’s no doubt that he’s in worse physical shape. He’s scarred and limping, a bit like the old 500 superheroes whose bodies paid heavily for their glory.

“Someone my age might not have any pain and be fine. Valentino is still going at 40, but I feel… a bit different. I also feel I’ve given my absolute all to the sport. And if my 100 per cent isn’t enough to win the MotoGP world title, then so be it, I can accept that. I feel I’ve given 100 per cent every lap of every race. I’ve enjoyed my career, with all the ups and downs, but I wouldn’t change it… Well, I’d change the fact that I’ve missed a few podiums here and there.”

Crutchlow has always talked the talk as well as he’s walked the walk. He comes across on TV as cocky, but that’s all part of the character he plays in MotoGP: the chippy underdog, always talking himself up, always up for a fight, always bubbling over with self-belief.

Some people reckon Crutchlow’s self-belief verges on delusion, and they’re probably right. But sometimes that’s what it takes: unless you convince yourself you can do something then you’re never going to achieve it. Fooling yourself into believing you can do the impossible has always been part of making it in motorcycle racing.

And yet Crutchlow’s tone has changed recently. MotoGP gets fiercer with each season, with tighter competition demanding more risk-taking and a weekend format that forces riders to lay it on the line in more sessions than not. Nowadays it’s just about impossible to have a good race unless you qualify well and you won’t qualify well unless you’re at the sharp end of FP2 and FP3, which determine your graduation to the Q1 and Q2 qualifying sessions.

“I’m faster in races but I’m not as fast over one lap,” he explains. “I find it easier to race than I do to hang it out for those three or four laps at the end of FP2 and FP3. I’ve pushed [Andrea] Dovizioso to change the rule [the FP/Q1/Q2 regulation] because he’s my age, so he’s feeling it as well! We should be able to work – we want two 45 minute sessions to work [on bike set-up], then go at it.”

Of course, MotoGP’s pitiless format is the fault of us all, to an extent. Specifically, it’s the responsibility of the sensation-hungry world of television, a fact that’s not lost on Crutchlow.

“The problem is that everyone wants the TV show, so it’s your fault!” he grins, nodding towards a couple of TV commentators. This is something he has always enjoyed doing – taking the mick out of the media.

He continues in this vein by suddenly contradicting much of what he’s just said.

“I’m not saying I am going to retire. What happens next year if I’m not feeling any pain and I’m leading the championship? Things will change again. Put it this way, I don’t need to race. I race because I love racing and I keep coming back because I love the sport and I keep giving my all.”

Next month when Crutchlow travels to Phillip Island for the Australian Grand Prix he will visit the Melbourne surgeon that undertook the two operations to fix the ankle after his October 2018 crash.

The big question he wants answered is this: should he remove the metalwork at the end of this season or not?

“I think the metalwork needs to come out, but I don’t want to take it out at the end of the year. I need to but I don’t want to, because it means I won’t be able to race at the start of next season.

“To take out the metalwork they have to move those nerves again, so how do I know how the nerves are going to react to that movement? That’s the big worry. Surgeons say it could be two weeks and you’ll have no pain, or it could be two years. I’ll only have seven weeks [between the last test of 2019 and the first test of 2020], which means I’ll have to go through the same as I did last winter, which was a nightmare. Fifty per cent of me wants to take out the metalwork at the end of this season and 50 per cent doesn’t.”

That’s the big question Crutchlow must answer soon.

The big question British fans must answer is this: who will carry British hopes in MotoGP after he retires?