Published in The Telegraph - 16/05/08
Suzi Perry salutes an astonishingly brave boy and looks forward to tomorrow’s French Grand Prix For all of this week, a fresh-faced 21-year-old has been sitting in a wheelchair being pushed around after hurting himself.
Most normal lads in this situation would understandably feel rather precious and would welcome any attention and nurturing that came their way. Jorge Lorenzo, though, is anything but normal. In fact, he's hard as nails. Not only did he look über-stylish as he was spectacularly flicked from his bike during the Friday practice session in China two weeks ago (pictured), but he rode to fourth place in the race on Sunday in spite of the pain and disability of his fractured ankle. It was enormously impressive, but it bordered on the unbelievable when we found out, on his return to Barcelona, that he was actually nursing two fractured ankles. So, all you Premiership-footie prima donnas, you can take your strained this and twisted that and whistle Dixie. Lorenzo the MotoGP racer wins the cast-iron cup for being the toughest man in sport.