#ao79

“Well, my sister started earlier than me. She started with a pocket bike when she was three,” Ogura tells CNN Sports. “So in between us, there’s two years’ difference.

“When I was small, I was not interested in MotoGP or other races, I mean, to watch on the TV, so I didn’t have idols like everybody, like Valentino (Rossi) as my idol, or (Casey) Stoner, or (Jorge) Lorenzo, or something like that. So, my sister was the one that I was looking up to.”

Little brother versus big sister

Ogura grew up in Kiyose, a suburb in Tokyo’s commuter belt. His father raced bikes at an amateur level, so he and his family devoted much of their free time to racing.

“Every weekend, me and my sister, and my father, my mother, used to go to the circuit and we were just a normal family,” Ogura says.

Perhaps inevitably, a young Ai began taking to the track himself with sister Karen. “(We raced together) a lot, especially in the pocket bike time. And we were in the same class, and she always beat me. It’s not a good memory for me, but for her, yes,” the now 24-year-old laughs.