Ángel Nieto
Ángel Nieto won thirteen world championships in the 50cc and 125cc classes across a 22-year career, becoming the most successful rider in Spanish motorcycle racing history and, long before Marc Márquez, the figure most credited with turning Spain into one of the sport's great national strongholds.
Ángel Nieto began racing in Spain's domestic championships in the early 1960s before moving into the world championship, where he won his first 50cc title for Derbi in 1969, beginning a run of success in the sport's smallest classes that would span more than two decades.
Nieto won thirteen world titles across the 50cc and 125cc classes for five different manufacturers, a record for Spanish riders that stood unmatched until the modern MotoGP generation. His longevity was remarkable for the era — his final championship came in 1984, at age 37.
Nieto is remembered not only for his own results but for building the foundation of Spain's motorcycle racing culture, paving the way for the country's later dominance of the sport. He died in a road accident in Ibiza in 2017, prompting tributes from across the paddock, including from the generation of Spanish riders — Crivillé, Lorenzo, Márquez — who followed the path he helped establish.
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Nieto famously refused to say the number thirteen out loud, considering it unlucky, and instead always described his championship haul as '12+1' — a superstition that became as much a part of his public identity as the titles themselves.
Across his career Nieto took titles for Derbi, Bultaco, Minarelli, Garelli, and Kreidler, moving between Spanish and Italian small-capacity specialists at a time when the 50cc and 125cc classes were fiercely competitive and technically inventive.
Nieto's last world championship came in 1984, when he was 37 years old, an unusually long competitive career for the era, built on his relentless work ethic and refusal to be written off by younger rivals.
Long before Spain became the dominant force in Grand Prix motorcycle racing through riders like Álex Crivillé, Jorge Lorenzo, and Marc Márquez, Nieto's success through the 1970s and 1980s is credited by historians of the sport with building the fan base, sponsorship interest, and cultural appetite for racing that later generations inherited.
Nieto died from injuries sustained in a road accident while riding a scooter in Ibiza in 2017, a death that prompted an outpouring of tributes across Spanish motorsport and beyond, including from Marc Márquez and other riders who considered him a foundational figure of their sport.