From Jerez to champion again: the long way back of Marc Márquez

In July 2020, Marc Márquez crashed at Jerez in the opening race of the season and broke his right arm. Few people watching that afternoon in Andalucía imagined it would take more than five years and four operations before he was champion again. On 28 September 2025, he finally did it, and Spanish fans who had followed every step had their rider back on top.

The crash that changed everything

Before 2020, Márquez had won six premier-class titles and looked ready to collect several more. The fall at Jerez ended that run in one moment. He tried to return far too quickly, damaged the repair in his arm and missed the rest of the season.

The years that followed were hard. He needed more surgery, struggled with double vision and fought a Honda that no longer suited him. At times he openly wondered whether he would ever win again.

For his fans in Spain, those seasons were painful to watch. A rider who had once made winning look routine was now crashing, recovering and starting again. Many wondered whether the arm, and the confidence, would ever fully return.

Why Spanish fans felt it so strongly

Spain is at the heart of MotoGP. The country usually hosts several rounds a year, from Jerez in the south to the season finale in Valencia, and the crowds there are among the loudest on the calendar. Márquez, who comes from Cervera in Catalonia, is one of their own.

That is why so many fans look for MotoGP tickets for the Spanish rounds in particular. They want to see a rider they have followed through injury and doubt race in front of a home crowd. After 2025, those races carry a story that few sports can match.

The emotion when he clinched the title in Japan showed how much it meant. Márquez was in tears on the podium, and reports from that weekend counted 2,184 days since his last championship. For his supporters, every one of those days had felt long.

A move that paid off

At the end of 2023, Márquez made a bold choice. He left Honda, the team he had won all his premier class titles with, to ride a year-old Ducati for the Gresini team. It meant leaving a factory team for a satellite one, but it gave him a bike that could win.

The gamble worked. He was soon fighting at the front again, and for 2025 he moved into the factory Ducati team. That season he won eleven Grands Prix and fourteen sprint races in seventeen rounds, often with his brother Alex finishing just behind him.

He sealed the title in Japan by finishing second at Motegi, with five rounds still to go. It was his seventh premier-class crown, level with Valentino Rossi, and his first since 2019. He also became the first rider to win a premier-class title six years after his previous one.

Jerez, where the story turned

There is something fitting about Jerez in all this. The circuit in Andalucía is where his arm broke and where the long road began. It is also one of the circuits where Spanish fans gather in huge numbers each spring.

Standing in those grandstands now means watching a rider who left as a champion, came back broken and returned as a champion again. Few careers in any sport have turned so sharply and then turned back. The people in the stands know exactly what it took.

For expats who have made Spain their home, a MotoGP weekend is also a chance to share in something the country cares about deeply. The noise, the flags and the motorbikes parked by the thousand outside the gates are part of the experience. So is the story of the rider everyone has come to see.

One title short of the record

Márquez will not race for ever, and nobody knows how many more titles he has in him. He is one short of the record of eight held by Giacomo Agostini, and with the 2026 season in its closing rounds, he is in the hunt to equal it this year. That alone gives every race he rides a little more weight.

For fans in Spain, the message is simple. The rider who once looked finished is back at the front, and the Spanish rounds are where he races closest to home. Being in the grandstand for one of them is a good way to share in a comeback that the whole country followed.