Only 22 days after breaking his right tibia and fibula in an enduro biking crash while training, Valentino Rossi has been given the all clear by the MotoGP medical staff to make a comeback at Aragón this weekend after having had to sit out the last round at Misano.

At 38 years of age what is remarkable is the degree of angst and annoyance that the Movistar Yamaha rider will likely harbour in having missed his true home Grand Prix of the season, and also another chance of that elusive tenth world championship.

It was Mark Twain who said: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Rossi, a global motorcycle racing icon and recently a veteran of 300 MotoGP outings (89 of which he has won and emerged from 190 with a trophy) is clearly mindless of the knife-edge and searing level of competition – inches, hundredths of a second and blinks of an eye – on which he lives.