GP disaster for Jonathan Barragan after practise crash
Jonathan Barragan of the Kawasaki Racing Team saw his world title ambitions shattered yesterday, when he dislocated his right leg whilst training in Belgium.
The accident occurred as the 24 year old Spaniard hit a patch of soft ground at Olmen and crashed heavily whilst practicing before the GP of the Netherlands this coming weekend. He was treated in hospital the same evening and is now awaiting the results of a post-operational scan before being discharged to the care of his own doctor.
It is as yet too early to make a prognosis of how long Jonathan will be absent from the race track, but he will clearly miss several GPs and consequently no longer has a chance of clinching the world title for Kawasaki in 2010. The KRT team has made it quite clear to Jonathan that he is under no pressure to return to racing until the injury has healed completely; the first priority is for him to regain full fitness and then begin preparation for an assault on the 2011 world title.
Prior to his injury Jonathan had been holding down 7th position in the FIM MX1 World Championship after two rounds of the 15 race series despite suffering poor starts in each of the first two GPs. The entire team had been working hard and believed they had found the technical solution and had been confidently expecting to reduce the 32 points deficit to the series pace-setter this weekend at Valkenswaard, a track where Jonathan had been victorious in 2009.
Jonathan will be sadly missed by the entire team this weekend, and they all send him their best wishes for a speedy recovery, but KRT Kawasaki still has two irons in the fire as their French duo of Xavier Boog and Sebastien Pourcel currently hold down 8th and 9th placing in the series and confidently expect to improve their ranking this weekend. Pourcel, who would already be much higher in the table but for misfortune at the first two rounds, returns to the track refreshed after a weekend off from racing, whilst Boog was an imposing double winner of a major international race in Belgium last Sunday at Mons, a track with very similar ground characteristics to those which he will face at Valkenswaard this weekend.
Thierry Chizat Suzzoni (team co-owner): It’s such bad news for Jonathan, who was coming back to top speed after a tough time in the first two GPs. He is a hard worker, and after intensive training and some alterations to the settings on the bike he was really confident for Valkenswaard where he won last year. He has been training in Holland for two weeks before flying to Spain last weekend to win both motos of the national championship; he drove back by car on Monday as there was no flight. He was having difficulty with his starts in Bulgaria and Italy, but we found the technical solution and everyone in the team was optimistic for this weekend’s GP. Jonathan will not be with us this weekend but we wish him a speedy recovery. We hope he will be back on the bike as soon as possible, but he must take his time and make sure he is completely fit before he makes his comeback; his goal now will be to get ready for 2011.
François Lemariey (team manager): It’s a shame, Jonathan was so optimistic for the rest of the season when we found the perfect engine settings for the start. He has been training hard in Holland and Belgium for two weeks, but yesterday afternoon at Olmen he had a bad crash. He crashed when he hit a soft part of the track and dislocated his right leg. Unfortunately it took a long time for the medical staff to get him to the hospital where the doctors immediately treated the injury. He got the results of a scan today and there are no other damages so he expects to be able training again in six weeks time. He is now waiting the permission to leave the hospital this weekend, to go back to Spain and visit his doctor to get advice for the recovery process.
Tags: Barragan, crash, holland, injury, kawasaki, motocross, training, valkenswaard
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