Chaz Davies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cFor me, it\u2019s Chaz [Davies],\u201d said Rea, when asked who his greatest rival has been.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, that was the longest battle \u2013 for many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had so many rivals from different moments in time. I think one of the most difficult to beat was probably 2021, the championship with Toprak [Razgatlioglu] \u2013 I don\u2019t think either Toprak or I wanted to actually win that championship! We threw away points so many times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, just as a rival, when you think about a rivalry, […] Chaz and I \u2013 through 2016, 2017, 2018, [they] were really special years.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Davies: \u201cThose things you can\u2019t learn\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Davies himself was in attendance at the press conference and gave his own tribute to Rea.<\/p>\n
For the Welshman, it was Rea\u2019s unwavering determination that set the Northern Irishman apart from other riders who perhaps had similar potential in certain aspects.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirstly, thank you very much for everything you\u2019ve given to Superbike,\u201d Davies said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally speaking, and [for] the rest of your peers as well, racing against you \u2013 we all know how tough it was, we all suffered it greatly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, at the same time, your peers only tell you what they think about you when you\u2019ve either retired or you\u2019re dead, and now\u2019s the time I think a lot of people can open up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor me, one of the most impressive things about you was that \u2018never give up\u2019 attitude. For sure I felt that racing against you, but then seeing what happened in 2019 and all the way through your career \u2013 even until […] your last weekend \u2013 you know what\u2019s coming with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve never lost any of that, I can only take my hat off to you for that. I think that\u2019s what separates you \u2013 as well as the other things \u2013 from being a great rider. Those things you can\u2019t learn, that\u2019s in you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Jonathan Rea\u2019s WorldSBK career stands out for its success, that success was won against a selection of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,106368,9400,52088,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-364818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-chaz-davies","11":"tag-honda-hrc","12":"tag-jonathan-rea","13":"tag-motor","14":"tag-motor-sports","15":"tag-motosport","16":"tag-motosports","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}