Wilco Zeelenberg: riders after retirement… and a disastrous first day in a new job!

The last few episodes of the podcast have had us thinking about riders and what they do after they retire. Do ex-athletes fill out the other roles in their respective sports better than non-athletes? Does having competed in the sport mean you automatically have all the necessary skills to exceed in your post racing career? A lot of us probably have a good idea about the answer to some of those questions already. But we wanted to speak about the topic, and as ever get to know a little better, a man whose post racing career has far outshone his competition career back in the day. Wilco Zeelenberg is a one time 250cc Grand Prix winner and as team manager, he took Jorge Lorenzo to three #MotoGP World Championships, Cal Crutchlow to his World Supersport Championship, and now is the team boss at Petronas Sepang Racing Team in MotoGP™… which you may know, just took victory in Misano with Franco Morbidelli and two previous victories this year with Fabio Quartararo… they’re pretty decent, to say the least. He also was the first ‘rider performance analyst’ in the MotoGP™ paddock, that’s “rider coach” to you and us, so basically is responsible for creating an entirely new job in racing. So what does he think of that? How did he decide the moment to retire from riding? How did he then rise to the very top of the sport once again? As you’ll hear, it was far from straight forward - even on his first day in the new job!!

Hope you enjoy the episode, leave a review if you liked it pretty please and any comments, get in touch using #MotoGPpodcast on Twitter, or comment below the YouTube version of this podcast!

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