It wasn’t always this way, but friends today: “I was made the villain and enemy number one by Rossi, who had everyone under control.”
Recently Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner were together sharing interesting races at the Italian’s ranch, and today the relationship between both is friendly, but it wasn’t always like this, with the Australian recalling how the Italian made him ‘the villain’.
Stoner recalled on the Ducati Diaries podcast how Rossi had the ability to manipulate the press and how there were negative repercussions against these media outlets: ‘He had everybody controlled, even press-wise. He was so important to every form of media. If they ever wrote any bad stuff about him, he’d blacklist them!’
He then explained that the rider knew the press needed him: ‘When he did that, they couldn’t afford it. They couldn’t allow their newspaper to be blacklisted and be left without interviews or any contact with Valentino’.
