I was just sitting down to watch the Super Bowl when the phone rang. It was Cycle News Editor Paul Carruthers calling to tell me he’d heard Tommy Aquino died in a motocross training accident. I sat there stunned; my wife asking me what was going on. She could see the concern on my face and hear the serious tone in my voice.

I didn’t know Tommy well. I’d covered him since he came on the AMA Pro Road Racing scene in 2008, just after he turned 16. I interviewed him a few times. He was fast right out of the box and won the AMA Road Racing Rookie of the Year Award.

Tommy Aquino waits on the grid at Mid-Ohio in 2010, while his mom Carrie shields him from the sun. (Larry Lawrence photo)

Racing is serious business and the pressure of the sport has different effects on different people. I noticed that Tommy always had a smile on his face. Don’t get me wrong, he could get focused when the time called for it, but he always looked like he was enjoying doing his job.

I once observed to another photographer the pretty woman who was serving as his umbrella girl. I was blown away when the photographer told me that was Tommy’s mom. She was so youthful; it didn’t seem possible she could have a son old enough to be a professional road racer.

In my mind I thought since youthfulness ran in his family, it struck me on the grid that day at Mid-Ohio that I might be photographing Tommy right through to the time I retired, or keeled over while doing my job. Unfortunately as we know, the job of motorcycle racer is a hazardous profession and to stay sharp riders often stay on the track even in the off-season. To be among the elite that’s what the job calls for.

Tommy was only 21 and was already starting to find success in the British road racing championships. He’d found a way to keep his career thriving even as his home series was going through a deep recession.

Almost anyone who watched racing closely could see Tommy’s best days of racing were ahead of him.

As those who’ve experienced a sudden loss of someone too young understand, you wish you could somehow turn back the hands of time and prevent the accident from happening. But life doesn’t work that way. I suppose that’s one of the things that make it so precious. We never know when our number will be called.

Even though I’m deeply saddened that Tommy Aquino has been taken from this world, I’m happy to know that, at least from my small window of knowing him, he seemed to enjoy to the fullest, the time on this earth he was given. — Larry Lawrence

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And this in from TV personality Greg White: