Mom Roser and childhood memories: "Alex used to clean Marc's bike"

Marc Marquez continues to sit at the top of MotoGP, after clinching his ninth world title with Ducati in 2025. This year his brother Alex, the world runner-up, is encountering greater difficulties on the Gresini team’s Desmosedici. But their relationship will never be undermined by results on the track...

The younger of the Marquez brothers has often spoken about the difficulties of dealing with constant comparisons. Yet Marc has always run with an extra gear, even as kids. No one could know it better than their mother, Roser Alentà, the only one able to reveal the most personal side of the two riders.

In recent years, the brothers from Cervera have normalized a situation that is anything but normal. Seeing two brothers finish first and second in a MotoGP race was an unprecedented event in motorcycling. And last year, they did it. Not only that, the season ended with Marc’s ninth world title and Alex’s second place.

Second place is never pleasant for any rider, but it tastes sweeter when the one ahead of you is your son. Roser Alentà recounted how, at first, only the older of the two seemed destined to become a rider. Marc got on his first bike when he was just a few years old, and the younger brother merely helped him. "Alex cleaned the mud off Marc’s bike; he wanted to fix it. In the end we bought him a bike too, a Yamaha Peewee enduro, with training wheels."

After often watching his brother ride, one day he decided to try it himself. From that moment, the younger brother became inseparable from his Yamaha. Their approach to the sport was initially a bit different, but in the end both found themselves competing in MotoGP. "At first he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it. Then he grew up and they began racing against each other in supermoto and dirt track. Alex liked riding; Marc liked winning," their mother Roser emphasized in an interview with La Vanguardia.

The two Marquez weren’t identical in every way. "Alex has always been very stubborn; sometimes I call him ‘Little Bull,’ he’s a Taurus and he was good with manual work, like assembling Lego pieces." Marc had a different personality; he started racing motorcycles as a boy and didn’t have the chance to earn a degree. "Marc was very studious, the best in his class; he was excellent at math and drawing, he always got top marks," Mrs. Alentà concluded.

At 33 years of age, the older Marquez brother is chasing his tenth world title, which would be his eighth in the MotoGP class. He is twelve points off the top of the riders’ standings. With seven Grands Prix still to go, the Ducati phenomenon remains the favorite despite Aprilia’s leap forward and an arm that isn’t in sparkling form. His destiny is still in his hands. Alex, for his part, has taken one win and a podium this MotoGP season, and sits eighth in the standings. From 2027 he will finally have a factory team at his disposal.

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