JOSH GREEN’S FINGERED HAND!

Take a look at the bloody mess that Josh Green made of his right hand on Day 5 of the recent ISDE in France, and spelled the end of his race. A freakish transport-section highside left the multi-time Aussie team rep with a compound fracture to his ring finger, a bunch of janked-up tendons in his hand and knuckles, and a few fingernails so battered that his hand-modelling days must surely be over.

“It was bleeding so much after the crash, so I managed to pull the finger-tip skin back over the bone sticking out of my ring finger before heading to hospital near the event in France, where they put some pins and wire in the thing and tried their best to tidy up my nail-beds,” Greeny told Transmoto earlier this week.

So, all that considered, would you believe that Green plans to race this weekend when the Yamaha Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) resumes in South Australia, just two weeks after he had it operated on in France? Well, it’s true! With the ShopYamaha rider leading the E2 class and running third in the AORC’s Outright standings (just 7 points behind his young teammate, Kyron Bacon, and 4 points off Andy Wilksch who sits second Outright), Green says he’d prefer to suck it up, take the pain for one masochistic weekend, and try to keep himself in the championship hunt, rather than sit on the sidelines and watch his points lead evaporate.

“I got the pin out of the ring-finger earlier this week. It’s painful and my grip strength isn’t much good, plus my pinky-finger knuckle tendon won’t let me make much of a fist. But with a mod to my throttle grip, I should be fine. I’ll be there on the AORC start line this Saturday morning in South Oz, and we’ll just take things from there. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to salvage some decent points this coming weekend. After SA, I’ve then got another three weeks for the thing to heal before the series finale down in Tasmania,” Green went on to say.

Todd Waters (who’s currently running second to Green in the E2 class, 10 points back) will not race the AORC this weekend (or the rest of the season) after dislocating his shoulder and breaking his humerus on Day 4 of the ISDE, meaning Green will be now defending his E2-class lead from third- and fourth-placed riders, Fraser Higlett and Michael Driscoll, who are 33 and 50 points adrift from Green, respectively.

Also worth of mention ahead of this weekend’s AORC is Jye Dickson. While he might not be a threat for the Championship this year, Dickson has got to be eyeballing the opportunity to snare his first class-win in the AORC. In his maiden AORC at Mendooran in mid-July, Dickson posted a super-impressive 3-3 in E2 and 5-3 Outright, and just this week was announced as the replacement E3-class rider for the injured Stefan Granquist on the KTM Off-Road racing Team, stepping up from his 450SX-F to Granquist’s 500EXC-F.

2022 AORC OUTRIGHT

Click here for detailed results for all classes in the 2022 AORC.

According to our calculations, here’s how the 2022 AORC Outright table looks ahead of this weekend’s Round 7 and 8 of the series in South Oz (SA was originally scheduled as Rounds 9 and 10 of the AORC, until Rounds 7 and 8 at Nowra, NSW, were cancelled due saturated conditions).