This Is What It Means To Be A Hometown Hero

Motorcycle.com Staff
by Motorcycle.com Staff

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two decades, the name Valentino Rossi should be a household name to motorcyclists worldwide. So beloved is “The Doctor” that the joke is Valentino is the hometown favorite at every race on the calendar. The truth is Rossi hails from a small town in Italy called Tavullia – a stone’s throw away from the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli. Rossi has single-handedly put Tavullia on the map and still calls the place home. If ever someone could be labeled a hometown hero, Rossi is it. In this video, we get a taste of just what the nine-time champion means to Tavullia and how much the locals cherish him.

Motorcycle.com Staff
Motorcycle.com Staff

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  • Old MOron Old MOron on Mar 29, 2018

    The great thing about Tavullia is that it hasn't let Rossi's stardom go to its head. It's still a small, quiet, sweet sort of place. The wife and I visited a couple of years ago. There are no hotels, no tourist maps, no guided tours. In order to get to Tavullia, we had to take two buses from Pesaro, about 12 miles away.

    One of the bus drivers had a yellow 46 pasted overhead. On another bus, we started a conversation with a retired truck driver who sported a faded, sweat-stained 46 baseball cap. He couldn't speak a word of English, and my wife speaks no Italian, but between his cap and her 46 t-shirt, they talked and gestured the entire trip.

    You can easily see Valentino's ranch from the highway. It's just sitting there in the middle of the rolling countryside.

    https://www.google.com/maps...

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