Divine providence wanted Pedro Acosta, the father of the new Moto3 world champion, to emerge miraculously unscathed in the early 1990s from a motorcycle accident in which he ran over a flock of sheep. The Peretujo, As they call him in Mazarrón, because it is the name of the family fishing boat and in which he still works, he took away “13 sheep” without anything happening to him and his life could continue to have the May 25, 2004, together with Mercedes Sánchez, his wife, to a boy who in his first World Cup season is already world champion at only 17 years old.
The Mazarrón shark He is the youngest of the house, because he is preceded by his sisters María del Mar (29 years old) and Miriam (22), and his love for motorcycles comes from his father, a regular at the Cartagena circuit to do runs on weekends . There he took the boy with him and enrolled him at the school of Paco Marble, Pacote, his inseparable coach ever since. What began as a strategy for the child to be entertained and he could ride quietly on a motorcycle, led to a brilliant race until the World Cup, with two previous years in the Red Bull Rookies Cup that he won last year at the second attempt. Always with the company of his mother in training, because he had no way to go to school and she stopped working as a cook in a school to take him in her car to train, train and train.
Acosta father does not get involved in the work methods that Pacote employs with your child. By passing on his passion for motorcycles and especially for Kevin Schwantz, he had enough. That’s why number 34 on his motorcycle in his first steps. Pedro’s parents are rarely seen on the circuits. His father has come to Portimao at the request of his son, while his mother has stayed in Mazarrón to experience it with his fan club. AS had the opportunity to speak with them in Alcañiz and ask ‘Peretujo’ if his story with a flock of sheep was real. He told it to us with grace, interrupted for a moment by his son, who sneaked into the conversation to tell funny that “Where he loaded himself the sheep have put a flag of mine to honor me.” They did so on their return from Qatar, where he broke the door down with a second place finish in his first GP and a win in race two. The son of Peretujo He started making history, but his father also has his and he tells it like this for this newspaper:
“In the year 92 or 93, I do not remember well, my father bought me the 900cc Honda Fireblade, just released, and a friend of mine bought the Suzuki GSX-R 750. By the weekend I had my motorcycle in the workshop, because they were changing my rear wheel, so that I could go out on the weekend. On Friday morning we had already finished fishing in Mazarrón and I asked my friend Blas to let me have his motorcycle, because there are five kilometers of straight from Puerto de Mazarrón to Mazarrón and I had to go to the workshop. It was early, like nine in the morning, and there was no one on the road. I arrived at the workshop and they told me that the motorcycle would be in the afternoon, so I returned to the port, to return the motorcycle, and that’s when I told myself that I was going to pull with the Suzuki to see how it would go … “, begins by recounting the father of the champion.
And he continues: “There is a curve before heading down the straight that I passed around 160 and from there I started to change gears giving gas. Suddenly, about halfway down the straight, I saw a cloud of dust. There were dirt roads. on both sides of the road and I thought a car might have passed from one side to the other and left some airborne dust. When there were 800 meters to go, I saw that there was something that was moving, and I started to brake, because they were sheep, and I saw that I was taking them ahead without being able to avoid it. The animals, due to the noise of the motorcycle, stopped, and left a gap of five feet through which I thought it was entering. As he was going to give it to me anyway, I decided to release the brakes and accelerate again, but at that moment the sheep decided to walk forward again… Buah. Zapatazo. I hit myself head-on. 13 sheep fell. I took some with my body, but the bike killed what is not written. He split them in half. This was a carnage. I fell on top of the sheep and they cushioned the blow. It was full of blood from head to toe, but I didn’t do anything to myself. Not a drop of blood was mine. “
A miracle that had to be celebrated: “The ambulance arrived, they took me to the medical center and while they were examining me, the doctor told me to tell him how the accident had been. The doctor did not believe what he was telling him and the guard entered these civilian to sign the report, which stated that there were 182 meters of braking and an impact speed of 215 kilometers per hour “. And I said: “Baby, thank God that you have been born again.” And I did that, because that night I went to party at the disco with my friend from Suzuki. If I was fined? No, but I remember perfectly that the guard asked me if I had not seen that there was a sign of 50. I told him that, if I had not seen a herd of 300 sheep, how could I have seen that sign. There they built a roundabout years ago and this year the city council has put a shark flag there with Pedro’s name on it. What is life, where I almost killed myself, they have put a flag to my son as a tribute “.