{"id":717585,"date":"2020-12-08T11:20:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T11:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/?p=717585"},"modified":"2021-10-12T11:26:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T10:26:48","slug":"motogp-no-one-not-even-marquez-gets-to-ride-the-magic-carpet-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/motorcycles\/motogp\/motogp-no-one-not-even-marquez-gets-to-ride-the-magic-carpet-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"MotoGP: no one \u2014 not even M\u00e1rquez \u2014 gets to ride the magic carpet for free"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A motorcycle cartwheels down the track and into the dirt. Medics arrive on the scene. They lay the injured rider on a stretcher and load him into an ambulance. Sirens wail. The crowd\u2019s attention returns to the racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he hurt pretty bad?\u201d asks a woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dunno,\u201d her photographer husband replies. \u201cSomebody said he broke his back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy, how\u2019d he do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another racer has overheard the conversation. He sidles up to the woman. \u201cCycles is a mean toy, lady,\u201d he says and walks off.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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We all know motorcycles can be dangerous \u2013 whether you use them as toys, modes of transport or tools of your trade \u2013 but here we are.<\/p>\n

The latest medical interventions to save Marc M\u00e1rquez\u2019s<\/a> career have focused attention on this reality.<\/p>\n

Most of us have been there, to a greater or lesser degree. If you ride motorcycles you will fall off. That\u2019s pretty much the law. And if you fall off you will most likely get hurt. This is the contract we all sign somewhere deep inside our subconscious, however much our conscious tries to convince us that it will never happen to me.<\/p>\n

The subconscious deal we make goes something like this: yes, we may fall off and, yes, we may get hurt but, you know what, that\u2019s okay, because no one gets to ride the magic carpet for free.<\/p>\n

Bike racers 100 per cent know they are going to get hurt. Repeatedly.<\/blockquote>\n

Moving rapidly through space on a motorcycle does something to you that driving a car doesn\u2019t. You are not separated from reality by the vehicle, you are part of reality. That\u2019s the thrill and that\u2019s the risk, right there. And of course you can\u2019t have one without the other, that\u2019s the deal.<\/p>\n

I accept the physical risk because the psychological risk might be greater. Riding a motorcycle, even down the shops on a sunny day or off to the airport on a rainy day, makes me happy. Everything about it, from controlling the machine as well as I can to controlling the risk as much as I can involves me totally. You have no option but to be in the zone, because the price of being elsewhere will most likely be more than you want to pay.<\/p>\n

Motorcycle racers sign essentially the same contract, but there\u2019s more pain in the small print. Bike racers 100 per cent know they are going to get hurt. Repeatedly. Because you can\u2019t live on the limit without going over the limit now and again. Simple as that.<\/p>\n

\n \"Mick\n
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Doohan\u2019s still-weak right leg fails him at Laguna 1993 \u2013 now he\u2019s heading straight for the haybales<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Pro-racers acknowledge that pain is part of the job. And, yes, they\u2019re happy with that trade. Social media frequently reminds us of that fact \u2013 every few days we are treated to the sight of a pro-racer in hospital, recovering from his latest injury, beaming at the camera and offering a heavily bandaged thumbs-up.<\/p>\n

MotoGP is safer than it\u2019s ever been, way safer than it was in the days of the 500 two-strokes. The 500s had a thrill\/spill ratio like nothing else, but the cost they exacted was horrific.<\/p>\n

Not one 500cc world champion from the last decade of the 500s retired because he was ready. Wayne Rainey<\/a>, Kevin Schwantz<\/a>, Mick Doohan<\/a> and Alex Crivill\u00e9<\/a> had no option but to quit, because they were so beaten up. And you can be sure Valentino Rossi<\/a> wouldn\u2019t still be racing if the 500s hadn\u2019t been replaced by kinder four-strokes. Most likely he would\u2019ve been battered into submission a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n

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Marc M\u00e1rquez has undergone a third operation on his fractured arm and now faces a battle to be fit for the start of next year’s MotoGP season. It typically takes…<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t

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Even four-strokes with traction control can bite and when they do things can still go badly wrong. Although run-offs are wider than ever and riding gear is safer than ever there are two main worries for the rider once he\u2019s down \u2013 getting hit by another bike and getting hit by his own bike. Sadly, these two predicaments are impossible to mitigate.<\/p>\n

It was M\u00e1rquez\u2019s misfortune to be struck by his motorcycle when he tumbled through the gravel trap at Jerez\u2019s Turn Three in July. That was what broke his right upper arm.<\/p>\n

The humerus bone isn\u2019t a good one to break, but M\u00e1rquez\u2019s biggest problem isn\u2019t the fracture but a malunion of the bone. That means the two parts of the bone didn\u2019t grow together correctly, due to an infection in the fracture site and due to his abortive comeback, just days after the first operation to plate the fracture.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s third surgery \u2013 using bone grafts to fix the malunion \u2013 came almost exactly four months since that second op, so why didn\u2019t surgeons react sooner? Because they have to wait and monitor bone growth. Only once they\u2019re certain the bone isn\u2019t healing properly do they go in again.<\/p>\n

The problem with racers and injuries: they push themselves too hard and it\u2019s not easy to tell them to stop.<\/p>\n

When will M\u00e1rquez be back on a MotoGP bike? No one knows, not even his orthopaedic surgeons, because his recovery could be better than expected or worse than expected. One learned surgeon will give you an opinion and another will give you a second opinion. In other words, anything you read on this subject at the moment is pure speculation.<\/p>\n

But we can get an insight into M\u00e1rquez\u2019s journey through the story of Repsol Honda\u2019s<\/a> first multiple world champion, who travelled a similarly rocky road in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Mick Doohan broke his right leg at Assen in 1992, when he was 27-years-old, the same age as M\u00e1rquez is now. The botched surgery that followed very nearly ended his career. Doohan was able to continue racing, but only by sentencing himself to a grisly few years of pain and suffering, with no guarantee of success at the end of it.<\/p>\n

\n \"Mick\n
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Doohan regains control just too late to avoid the straw bales, Laguna 1993. He went down hard<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Doohan sustained a distal spiroid displaced fracture of the tibia, which shouldn\u2019t have been a huge problem, but the local surgeons messed up the operation, during which they pinned and screwed the bone back together. Their poor workmanship caused compartment syndrome, which starved the limb of fresh blood. Within days the leg had started to rot.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, Doohan was racing again two months later but the fracture site had become infected and the infection wouldn\u2019t go away. After the 1992 season surgeons went back in to remove the pins and screws in the hope of clearing out the infection.<\/p>\n

Getting rid of the metalwork exorcised the infection, but one problem fixed was another caused. The Aussie was determined to do everything he could to get fully fit for the 1993 season, so he hit the gym, hard. So hard that he bent the tibia, because the bone had been weakened by the removal of the metalwork.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n

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And then he started pre-season testing. At Eastern Creek he had a huge 120mph\/200km\/h highside because he was using his upper body too much to change direction, to compensate for the weak leg.<\/p>\n

This is the problem with racers and injuries \u2013 they push themselves too hard and it\u2019s not easy to tell them to stop.<\/p>\n

When Doohan returned to Eastern Creek for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix he had a broken left scaphoid, after another fall during testing, and we could see his lower leg was bent, even when he was in his leathers. He raced most of the season like that, ending up fourth overall behind Schwantz, Rainey and Daryl Beattie.<\/p>\n

Doohan didn\u2019t quite make it to the end of the season. He crashed out of the lead of the penultimate race at Laguna Seca, after highsiding out of the Corkscrew. He most likely would\u2019ve saved the situation, but his right leg buckled, dropping him off the side of the bike. Struggling to regain control he ran wide and slammed into the trackside straw bales, the bike ejecting him back onto the track.<\/p>\n

The crash broke his right shoulder and his right leg wasn\u2019t in much better shape, so he was sat in the middle of the track, unable to stand, like a rabbit that\u2019s been half run over by a car, with bikes hurtling past either side. It was a horrible thing to watch. Finally he staggered off the track.<\/p>\n

\n \"Mick\n
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Doohan\u2019s Laguna crash ended his 1993 season which was immediately followed by more surgery<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

So began the next part of Doohan\u2019s odyssey. And just like M\u00e1rquez now, not everyone was sure he would make it. Days after Laguna, surgeons encased the leg in an Ilizarov external fixator. By May 1994 Doohan was dominating again. It had taken him almost two years to get back to where he was before the accident.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t directly compare a messed-up tibia in 1992 with a broken humerus that\u2019s required bone-graft surgery in 2020, but what\u2019s going on inside M\u00e1rquez\u2019s mind won\u2019t be dissimilar to what went on in Doohan\u2019s all those years ago.<\/p>\n

Recovery from such deep lows must come entirely from inside. Globally eminent surgeons can fix the physical damage, but that\u2019s for nothing unless the rider is prepared to put himself through weeks of mind-numbing boredom in hospital, months of grim rehab in the gym, then saddle up and go out to fight, just like he did before, ignoring the 24\/7 pain. What we see of these journeys from the outside is only the very tip of the agony iceberg.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n

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It\u2019s been strange not writing about Marc M\u00e1rquez these last few months. Ever since the middle of 2012, when he signed his first MotoGP contract, he\u2019s stolen most of the…<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t

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