When we swerved to the left, bent right over, fully in third gear, at 170 kilometres per hour, from my Honda all I could see were the upper exhaust pipes of his Yamaha. He was still ahead of me, just as we came into the turn at the top of the hill, right where the horizon ends and you begin to disappear behind it. I was glued to him. It was the dying moments of an open shoot-out which began with eight riders and was now down to two. The two of us. Me and Max Biaggi.