Agostini grew up in Lovere, where his father operated a transport company. He competed secretly in hill climbs and road racing as a young man, his father initially disapproving of motorcycle racing. At 21 he won the 1963 Italian 175 cc championship on a Moto Morini, and in 1964 won the Italian 350 cc title and scored his first World Championship points. These results attracted Count Domenico Agusta, who signed Agostini to ride alongside Mike Hailwood at MV Agusta in 1965. In his very first race for the team, Agostini defeated Hailwood to win the 350 cc West German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.
Hailwood departed for Honda in 1966, leaving Agostini as MV Agusta's lead rider. The 1966 and 1967 seasons saw fierce competition between the two, with Agostini winning the 500 cc World Championship in both years. The 1967 title was decided on countback after both riders tied on wins — Agostini prevailing with more second-place finishes. After Honda withdrew from racing at the end of 1967, Hailwood also retired from motorcycles, ending what Agostini regarded as the greatest rivalry of his career; the two men remained friends, and Agostini served as a pallbearer at Hailwood's funeral in 1981.
With Honda and Hailwood gone, Agostini swept both the 350 cc and 500 cc World Championships from 1968 through 1972 — ten consecutive world titles across the two classes, including a streak of 58 consecutive race wins that stood as an extraordinary record. In 1971 he claimed his tenth World Championship, surpassing the previous record of nine shared by Carlo Ubbiali and Hailwood. He won the Isle of Man TT on ten occasions during this period, including five consecutive Senior TT victories from 1968 to 1972.
Following the death of his close friend Gilberto Parlotti at the 1972 Isle of Man TT, Agostini announced he would never again compete there, declaring the 37.73-mile circuit unsafe for World Championship competition. His stature as reigning World Champion gave the decision enormous impact. A subsequent boycott by top Grand Prix riders and sustained criticism of TT safety led the FIM to remove the Isle of Man TT from the World Championship calendar after the 1976 races.
By 1973 Yamaha's two-stroke machines had become a genuine threat, and Jarno Saarinen delivered Agostini's first head-to-head defeat in years. Internal friction with teammate Phil Read cost Agostini the 1973 500 cc title; he won only the 350 cc class that year. For 1974 he signed with Yamaha, shocking the Italian racing world. He debuted at Daytona, winning the Daytona 200 aboard the new Yamaha TZ750, beating Kenny Roberts. He won the 350 cc World Championship for Yamaha in 1974 — the first two-stroke victory in the 350 class — and in 1975 claimed the 500 cc World Championship on the Yamaha, becoming the first rider to win the premier class on a two-stroke machine.
Agostini remained competitive through 1976 and 1977, recording the final Grand Prix victories for MV Agusta and for four-stroke engines in the 500 cc class (a wet-weather win at the Nürburgring in 1976). He retired from Grand Prix competition after the 1977 season at age 35.
In 14 seasons Agostini started 223 races, finishing on the podium 159 times with 122 victories. His 15 World Championships comprise seven in the 500 cc class (1966–1972 consecutive, plus 1975) and seven in the 350 cc class (1968–1974 consecutive). He set 117 fastest laps across his career.
In 1982 Agostini returned to motorcycle racing as manager of the Marlboro Yamaha team. He won three 500 cc titles with Eddie Lawson and managed riders including Graeme Crosby, Kenny Roberts, Luca Cadalora, and Àlex Crivillé. He subsequently managed the Cagiva factory team from 1992 to 1994 before retiring from team management in 1995.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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