Julian Ryder, Toby Moody and Alvaro’s XIX Tattoo

(*Above: Alvaro and his ‘XIX’ tattoo at the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix)

Forgot to mention in the post yesterday a curious little piece of trivia regarding Bati, arising from the race coverage…
I watch MotoGP on British Eurosport – a thoroughly enjoyable experience, in great part thanks to the excellent Julian Ryder and Toby Moody; jovial, intelligent guys whose informed unbiased and down-to-earth banter is a million miles from ITV’s frankly piss-poor Formula One coverage.
Testimony to just how great they are is that my other half, who doesn’t even follow – or really like – MotoGP – loves listening to them 🙂

Weirdly though, in the Czech coverage, they mentioned having noticed that Alvaro Bautista had what they described as a “new” tattoo of ‘XIX’ on his forearm (Roman numerals for 19 of course); whereas it’s actually been there quite some time now – in fact you can see it on this Alvaro Bautista Profile videoclip from last year’s Season Review DVD…
This clearly suggests that little Bati simply doesn’t get enough coverage if something so big and tattoo-like isn’t noticed before now! I’d certainly not put it down to lack of interest from messrs Ryder and Moody, who judging by their comments, really enjoy Bati’s riding and presence in 250.
(*And bless them too for finding His Smugnificence Lorenzo’s antics hilarious… and “verging on camp” as they put it in a moment of serious understatement…)