KEVIN SCHWANTZ LONE STAR
Huge banners and home-made signs proclaiming good wishes and positivity towards fallen world champion and local homeboy Wayne Rainey were strewn about all over the Northern California race circuit. Kevin Schwantz, the new 500cc Grand Prix World Champion, was pensive and looking down at the ground before him as he slowly walked up the slanted hillside leading up to the press room at Laguna Seca Raceway.
After a bitterly fought civil war played out all over the world with fellow Yankee Wayne Rainey, the Texan had, finally, managed to get the better of the three-time world champion. Still, the overall mood reverberating out amongst the bleached-out Salinas hillsides was both sombre and stoic, as local hero Rainey was some 300 miles southward in an emergency ward in Los Angeles, paralysed and fighting for his life.
“Kevin! Kevin!” yelled fans gathered outside the fenced-off press area. “Kevin! You’re the world champion!”
A decade in the making, it had all come right for the Lucky Strike Suzuki rider that summer – a titanic, bitterly fought title played out over 12 rounds between Schwantz and the Californian Rainey, decided seven days ahead of Laguna
