MotoGP, Stoner’s revelation: “The better my weekend, the more I wanted to die”

Casey Stoner’s career came to an end in 2012 when the Australian phenomenon was just 27. His retirement came down to an unwillingness to embrace the life that the reigning class demanded, combined with various health problems that Casey has only really begun to speak about in recent years.

As we know, the double world champion suffers from chronic fatigue, but also anxiety, with which he has been diagnosed only recently.

In Stoner’s words

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"The anxiety was only diagnosed recently, I didn’t really know what it was”, Stoner told podcast Gypsy Tales. "Honestly, before the diagnosis, I though that anxiety was something people made up to justify stress. But everyone feels stressed out”.

A situation that seriously conditions the former champion’s state of health: "Even my back locks up due to anxiety. I can actually feel it come on in situations where I don’t feel comfortable”.

The pressure of expectation

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"It would perhaps have been easier to manage my career if I’d known sooner. I sometimes got a bad rap because I was closed off with people and the press, because I was never comfortable doing it”, continues Casey, before talking about how he felt during his MotoGP years: "And then race day… For years, up until probably my last two years of racing MotoGP, the better my weekend went, the more I wanted to die. I would curl up on the floor of the camper, as sick as a dog and with my stomach in knots. I did not want to race. I couldn’t feel worse, or more apprehensive”.

“I felt the pressure from the team, from everyone who had ever helped me. I had a team of 70 people, and when you’re the number one rider, everyone expects you to win. Only after finishing my career did I understand why I struggled so much with it”, concludes the former Honda and Ducati rider.

Translated by Heather Watson

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