Casey leads MotoGP chase

Australia's next world champion is likely to take the form of a baby-faced kid who left school at the age of 12 and left Australia at 14 to race bikes on the world stage. Now a 21-year-old man, Casey Stoner is on the verge of winning the 2007 MotoGP championship.

And although Stoner is reluctant to be drawn into speculation about this year's championship, those closest to him have no doubt he is about to fulfill his destiny.

Of 11 Moto GP rounds this season Stoner has won six. And he has beaten the man revered in Europe as being one of the greatest - Valentino Rossi - and beaten him in his own backyard.

Stoner now has a 44-point lead over Rossi in the MotoGP championship with just seven rounds to race as Rossi's chances - undoubtedly because of a slow bike - seem to diminish with every round.

Understandably, no one took much notice when Casey Stoner and his family left Australia to conquer the world. Just another kid with dreams.

Two years later he was back and held a press conference in a Sydney pub to announce the dreams were on track. As the reporters drank their schooners, Stoner was still two years too young to even be allowed in the pub. The baby face was a dead give-away but the publican, as enthralled as the journalists by the kid's story, turned a blind eye.

"It's going well," Stoner said, "but I've got a lot to learn. That's why I am there.

"I've got to learn to stay on for a start," he said, tenderly manipulating a wrist.

Stoner started riding a motor bike at the age of four. He won his first championship at five. He was helped by his father Colin, a painter by trade, who had dabbled in racing in his youth.

By the time Stoner was 12 the family was planning to live and travel in Europe. Instead of learning English at home, young Stoner was learning Italian and Spanish, the languages of the sport.

The Stoners bought an old caravan in the UK and off they went. Only blind faith kept them going in the early days. Colin Stoner worked in a motor bike shop in England during the week. Casey picked up prize money here and there at weekends. Mum, Bronwyn, made the caravan as much a home as was possible.

When Colin Stoner came back for that first press conference he knew he had made the right decision. That blind faith had been rewarded. But he did quip: "If I had known how much those tolls cost on the European motorways we probably would never have gone!"

Casey Stoner returned to Europe to his first big break. The former Spanish rider Alberto Puig spotted him and guided his early career through the 125cc and 250cc classes opening doors which otherwise might have been closed forever.

By the start of the 2006 season Stoner was a known identity in European motorcycling with a fulltime ride in the Moto GP class with Honda. At last he was chasing Rossi. But several spills made him an easy target for the European press which idolised the Italian rider.

"The Rolling Stoner" jibed one headline. Stoner, normally unflappable, was annoyed. He didn't think he fell off that often.

"I have to push the bikes hard. Sometimes I push too hard," he said.

Between 2002 and 2004 Stoner had fallen off 39 times.

For all that, 17 years of racing in probably the most dangerous sport in the world have resulted in only two broken collarbones and a broken wrist. "Casey wouldn't be where he is today if he didn't crash as much," Colin Stoner said earlier this year. "He needed to find out how far he could push. It was a leaning curve."

Stoner's big break came at the end of 2006. Despite his stumbles, Stoner had been anointed by Rossi as a future champion and offers came to lure him away form Honda. Ignoring a good deal from Yamaha, Stoner signed with Ducati. It proved to be a masterstroke.

After Stoner's win in the United States this season, he again signed with Ducati until the end of 2009.

With the future secure Stoner can now concentrate on the present. He knows Rossi will never give up. That story has some thrills and spills to go.

But the championship dream which started 17 years ago remains just that; Stoner is taking nothing for granted.

"I'm just interested in racing. I go out with the same attitude in every race - to finish in the highest possible spot I can. That's the way it was when I was a kid. Nothing much has changed."

Well, that's not quite right. With a salary of more than $A1 million a year rolling in, the old caravan has been replaced by a luxury apartment in Monaco. And there's a new woman in the family. Stoner this year married Adriana Tuchyna, an 18-year-old Adelaide girl whom he met four years ago when she asked him to autograph her stomach.