Who is Marc Marquez? As the #93 rolled out of the garage for the 2013 Qatar GP, the answer was the rookie. The new kid on the block. Dani Pedrosa’s teammate. The guy with huge shoes to fill as he joined the factory Repsol Honda Team in place of Hall of Famer Casey Stoner. Rumoured to have been offered the seat the season before – after just losing out on the Moto2™ crown following an injury-hit end to the season – Marquez had turned it down to make sure he moved up as champion in every class before MotoGP. He did just that.

But those were the known answers on Day 1. By the end of even that first race, “MotoGP podium finisher” was another response. By the conclusion of the second race weekend of his rookie season, in Austin, the answer was youngest ever MotoGP race winner. The end of the season saw him crowned MotoGP World Champion, as a rookie. A history-maker from the off.

It was a stunning debut year as Marquez gained momentum and those around him seemed to falter. The aforementioned Pedrosa, not champion but winner of most races the season before, had his own dramas and injuries – including a crash in Aragon that saw a touch from Marquez damage his traction control and the #26 flicked skywards. Jorge Lorenzo, who broke his collarbone in practice in Assen and raced two days later. He then did it again, and returned again. Back to full strength.

Lorenzo wagged his finger at the #93 in parc ferme after Marquez made contact at the final corner in Jerez. The duo duelled for pole in Silverstone and Lorenzo then made a statement on Sunday in one of the greatest showdowns ever. The title fight went to the wire in Valencia and felt, already, like history in the making – as a rivalry. Something somewhat amusingly untrue, back then, of Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi. That started with the ‘Doctor’ tipping his hat to the #93 as Marquez took his first podium in Qatar. But more on that later…

2014 saw Lorenzo struggle to find form and Marquez only increase his own. An unbelievable run of 10 victories in a row to start the season saw him put together an almost unassailable lead before the paddock left for the flyaways. And they weren’t walkovers. Some were. Some were duels. Some were group battles. Some were brutal. All had the same winner. Marquez had redefined the game and the elbow down was the new way to ride in MotoGP. It hadn’t been before.

And then came 2015. Is that where the sport’s biggest rivalry began? Or was it the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca in 2013 when Marquez did a Rossi on Rossi? In the 2015 Argentina GP the two collided (we won’t be taking sides). In Assen the final chicane saw one go over the gravel and one not. But that was in the background – to an extent – early on, as the fight for the crown became Rossi vs Lorenzo. Yamaha rolled out with serious form, Lorenzo had learned how to tempt Marquez into mistakes, Rossi was consistently chipping away at the dream: a eighth MotoGP crown, bringing his total title count to ten.

Then came Thursday of the Malaysian GP. In the Press Conference, Rossi blasted the way Marquez had raced the weekend before in Australia – when the #93 had won – and the schism between red and yellow opened up. If you’ve seen that, you can recall the faces perfectly. And then came Sunday in Sepang.

We’re not rehashing it – watch the documentary, 10 years on, about that day, below. It’s iconic in different ways, in different meanings of the word, to different fans. Maybe you’re team Marquez and think it was a kick. Maybe you’re team Rossi and put your middle finger up at that. Maybe you’re somewhere in between – the grey area that exists but is often left unrepresented. You think Rossi was wrong but Marquez deserved it. You think Rossi was framed and Marquez deserved more. Whatever your feelings on it, the final run of that season has left an imprint on the sport that is very much still there – and not from dOrNa sPorTS cOnsPIrACiEs. Tangibly.

On track, on that final day of the season in Valencia, Lorenzo won lights to flag. Rossi came fourth from the back, after penalty points for the Sepang Clash were enough to put him there. For some camps, it’s another Marquez conspiracy – holding back, although Lorenzo did not need to win that race to take the crown. In this story, that of the #93, the headline was different: for the first time in MotoGP, Marquez was defeated. 2016 saw him roll out to fix that.

2016 was a new challenge, however. Nine different victors, including four maiden winners, made it a varied season at the top. Eight different winners were in a row, too – before Andrea Dovizioso’s cloud nine win at Sepang added the cherry on top. But Marquez chipped away as both Rossi and Lorenzo faltered, including a double DNF for the Yamaha riders in Japan – making what had been a long shot for the #93 to take the crown into a sudden moment of glory at Motegi. Roll on 2017.

First it was Maverick Viñales on top. Then Yamaha faded. Then came Dovizioso and Ducati, and some of the greatest duels we’ve seen. Watch the 2017 Japanese GP below for a showdown held in the wet that looks like it’s raced in the dry. Legendary. But Marquez couldn’t be stopped, and the crown was his.

2018 saw more duels with Dovizioso and a resurgent Lorenzo – now with Ducati. Marquez and Repsol Honda marched on, despite a valiant challenge. 2019 was Marquez back at his very peak, with a new rookie in the wings rolling out to turn hype into the real thing: Fabio Quartararo. But the crown, again, went to Marc Marquez.

The run of form is something seldom seen in sport, most especially when racing against competitors who are now – many, if not all – Legends or Hall of Famers, either already or sure to be in the future. So when the 2020 season, delayed by Covid, finally got underway, Marc Marquez was king of the world. Reigning MotoGP champion, champion every season bar one that he’d raced in MotoGP, one of the best bikes on the grid, and rolling out on home turf in Jerez to make a statement ride.

After an early mistake that saw him run off, the potential dream start to the season was on the back foot. But if you feel like you’ve walked on water for six of the previous seven seasons, you’re likely to believe you’re able to do it again. And for some tantalising laps as he went full gas from the back, Marc Marquez got closest to magic most athletes will ever be able to imagine. And then, in one crash, it all went wrong.

In chapter 2, we go from that day in Jerez through the intervening years that set him up for the greatest comeback in sporting history – not in a race, or over a few laps, but one years in the making, never before seen in a career. If you’re new to MotoGP since that crash, this chapter is the story we thought we’d begun. 2020 was the plot twist.