#AlexMarquez

The season opener at Losail went mostly according to expectations, which is to say it was crowded up front. At one point I counted nine bikes in the lead group, a sight normally seen in Moto3. French sophomore Johann Zarco led from pole most of the day, fueling a lot of premature trash talk. Once his tires went up, though, it came down to Andrea Dovizioso and Marc Marquez for early bragging rights. Round One goes to the Italian on points. No TKO.

His brother slid the front end of his Honda RC213V during the MotoGP race but managed to save it and cross the line for third place.

Even with the race going off on Sunday again for the second time, sixty-some years of racing on Saturday at the Cathedral have produced a number of curious finishes. Nicky Hayden had his first and only non-U.S. win here in 2006. Ben Spies won here in 2011 in what many of us mistakenly thought was the beginning of a great career. And Jack Miller’s win last year defines “unlikely.”

No disrespect to Dani Pedrosa, but I was really hoping Marc Marquez was going to win the Czech round of the MotoGP championship this past weekend. It would have been his 11th win in a row, a record-breaking achievement, surpassing none other than Giacomo Agostini. More to the point, it would have strengthened my argument about the 2014 MotoGP season so far: the racing has been kinda boring. It’s not Marc’s fault; the kid is amazingly talented and will surely receive Hall of Fame status when he eventually hangs up his leathers. Sure, the resurgent Rossi has been inspiring to watch, and other riders (Pedrosa, Lorenzo, Dovizioso, Aleix Espargaro) have shown flashes of brilliance, but c’mon, at the end of the day, we all know Marquez is going to wrap this thing up.