Racing Career
Cadalora began his professional motorcycle racing career in 1984, riding an MBA in the 125cc world championship. In 1986, he won the 125cc World Championship while riding for the Garelli factory racing team. His success earned him a promotion to the 250cc class with Giacomo Agostini's Marlboro Yamaha factory racing team in 1986. In 1991, Cadalora switched to the Rothmans Honda factory racing team and won the 250cc World Championship aboard an Erv Kanemoto-tuned Honda NSR250. He successfully defended his title with Honda in 1992, claiming his third world championship.
In 1993 he rose to the blue riband 500cc division as Wayne Rainey's team mate in the Kenny Roberts-Yamaha team. In three seasons on the Roberts Yamaha, he displayed flashes of brilliance, finishing as high as second to Mick Doohan in 1994. Cadalora rejoined Kanemoto for the 1996 season, racing a Honda NSR500. Despite lacking any major sponsors, he still managed to finish the season in third place aboard the Kanemoto-Honda.
For the 1997 season, he got a contract as official Yamaha rider in the new Promotor Racing team, backed by an Austrian businessman, but after few races the squad fell in financial problems. WCM rescued the team with the help of a Red Bull sponsorship and Cadalora ended the season in sixth place. At the beginning of the 1998 season, both WCM and Cadalora lost the Yamaha official support. He returned to the Rainey-Yamaha works team for a few races to replace an injured Jean-Michel Bayle, then helped develop the new MuZ race bike. In 1999 he was again with MuZ. Cadalora closed out his career with Kenny Roberts' Modenas team in 2000.
In an era rich in talent, with competitors such as Doohan, Rainey and Schwantz, Cadalora was an enigma. Capable of defeating the best riders in the world on certain days, he would just as often post poor results, so lacked consistency at the highest levels of the sport. He retired with 34 Grand Prix victories in three different classes.
Read more about this topic: Luca Cadalora
Famous quotes containing the words racing and/or career:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)