Two brothers, one title dream – MotoGP’s high stakes sibling rivalry

World class sporting siblings may not be unheard of, but with the notable exception of Serena and Venus Williams in tennis, they are rarely in direct competition for the same big prize.

Rarer still is a story with as many twists and turns as that of Marc and Álex Márquez, two brothers from the tiny town of Cervera in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia. Currently lying first and second in the MotoGP standings, they are vying for a world title at speeds of over 220 mph (354 kph) as the Formula One of motorcycle racing approaches the halfway point of the season.

Coming back from injury Undoubtedly among the greatest ever motorcycle racers, Marc Márquez is seeking his first premier class crown since 2019, after overcoming a series of horrendous injuries, a debilitating eye condition – diplopia – that left him seeing double, and parting company with Repsol Honda, the team for which he had won six premier class titles. Now riding a factory Ducati, MotoGP’s glamorous equivalent of F1’s Ferrari, the 32-year-old is seeking his seventh crown. No one, however, expected his younger brother, Álex, to be snapping at his heels.

‘When you’re enjoying it and you’re fast, it’s easy’

“This bike was easy from the first moment, it’s good for my riding style, so I didn’t need to change a lot,” Álex explains. “Me and Marc were coming from a 2023 bike that was really difficult to ride … last year’s bike was a nightmare on corner entry.

“When you’re on a bike and you’re thinking a lot, you’re slow; when you’re on a bike and you don’t need to change your riding style a lot and you can just build speed, you’re really fast, and this is what the 2024 bike has given to me, it’s better in all the areas, so it’s much easier for me. When you’re enjoying it and you’re fast, it’s easy.”

Álex knows no one expected his ascent this term and says he can feel the shifting dynamic of competing at the very top. “It’s more pressure, but in a super nice situation,” he tells CNN Sports. “Because, at the beginning of this season, nobody was waiting for us and suddenly we are there fighting with Marc. You know everybody was expecting the fight between Marc and (two-time MotoGP world champion) Pecco (Bagnaia), not me, but we are there.”

‘He was like another person, angry with everybody’

While Álex has had lows, none compare to those his brother has faced. A badly broken right arm during the 2020 season needed seemingly endless surgeries after Marc attempted to return to racing too soon and aggravated the injury. Along with numerous other broken bones, as well as the psychological and physiological trauma of his recurring episodes of diplopia, his entire career looked to be in jeopardy.