MXGP Insider No.10: Injuries

Welcome to our weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto‘s MXGP Insider. Penned each week by Vurbmoto’s David Bulmer, the MXGP Insider will present the story-behind-the-stories of the European motocross scene.

There is no getting around it – injuries suck. Having got back from an awesome day of filming with Tim Gajser for a DVD project, I log onto the internet to find out that four top Europe-based riders have had a bad crash and all sustained serious injuries.

In no particular order (and these are unconfirmed reports):

• Todd Waters broke his leg, collarbone and hip
• Mike Kras has a pneumothorax, plus back and neck injuries
• Max Nagl broke his wrist

All three riders were injured in the same incident at a Dutch track, when they landed on a local rider who had crashed on a blind jump. Then in Belgium, Glenn Coldenhoff injured a knee that’s apparently ruled him out of the whole season.

Now, when Herlings got hurt earlier on in the season at a Dutch Championship race, a lot was made of the fact that he was competing in a race that he didn’t have to be in. Since then, he’s defended his decision by saying that injuries can happen any time you get on a bike and that he’s going to keep on riding and racing when he wants to. To be honest, he’s right. There is no way you can guarantee that you’re going to stay injury-free in motocross – it just doesn’t happen. All you can do is make the risks acceptable and believe in your ability and the ability of those around you.

It does however bring into question the fact that GP riders are out training on tracks with a lot of pure amateurs, that don’t have sufficient marshals in place. It was brought up in a meeting the media had with Luongo and the FIM, that maybe it’s time the teams got organised and rented out tracks together on certain days of the week so that they aren’t crammed into a riding session with 100 other guys at Lommel (which is how Ken de Dycker got injured earlier this year).

As I said, it doesn’t take out all the risk, but it does make it more manageable and given that it’s in the team’s best interests to have their star riders on the track every weekend, you’d think it might be something they’d think about.

Unfortunately, this will no doubt over-shadow the excellent beginning to the 2014 season which has seen plenty of drama, action and different race winners, on some pretty amazing circuits. Last weekend’s track at Sevlievo was possibly one of the best track surfaces I’ve seen and provided a real test for any rider out there. Rain eventually came in at the end of the day and kind of spoiled it a bit, but for the early races, it was prime.

The next MXGP round is at Valkenswaard and is the first sand track of the year, but before that, there is a weekend off which currently has a Dutch race, a Belgian race and an Electric race taking place. Fingers crossed no more riders get hurt.