Less than a week ago, last Saturday at Valentino Rossi’s ranch, the World Championship seemed to take a decisive turn and completely eliminate the third candidate for the MotoGP crown. The Italian Marco Bezzecchi, 24, fractured his right collarbone in a fall while training on dirt bikes with his teammates from the VR46 academy, also rivals on the asphalt in the premier category. This Friday, five days after undergoing surgery on Sunday to put his shoulder back in place, BezHe scored a prodigious third place in the table and surpassed the times of his two great rivals for the title.
“It hasn’t been an easy week, but fortunately this morning I didn’t feel too bad on the bike,” said the VR46 Racing rider, who starts the Indonesian GP 54 points behind leader Pecco Bagnaia and 51 behind his main pursuer. , Jorge Martín from Madrid. The great protagonist this Friday landed on the island of Lombok the same morning as the training day. He did not arrive at the Mandalika circuit until eight o’clock and three hours later he set the fifth best time in the first session, but not before having a roll on the gravel that chilled the hearts of his entire team.
“I wasn’t scared. I immediately tried to protect my arms. Of course, I burned my ass,” said the pilot, in good spirits, once the action on the track was over. He rolled several times on the gravel, but fortunately he got up on his own two feet. The two titanium plates on his shoulder withstood the impact. The World Cup doctors, with Dr. Ángel Charte following his progress from his garage, followed him with a magnifying glass and forced him to undergo two check-ups to confirm his discharge, one first thing in the morning and the second between the two sessions of the day. .
“The shoulder became inflamed during the flight, but I didn’t suffer particularly. The pain is there, but I expected a little more. I imagined the worst so that it would always get better,” she explained after taking a trip of more than 24 hours to cross half the world towards Indonesia. Ten minutes from the end of the second session, ‘Bez’ showed that he is made of different stuff by lowering the circuit record, which was then also lowered by the Aprilias of Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales, who led the day.
Matteo Flamigni, the Italian’s technical chief, accustomed to the wonders of Rossi at the time, was making a fuss in the garage when reviewing the times of the legendary academy product. In the DAZN broadcast, Jorge Lorenzo threw more flowers at the driver from Rimini. “He thought it would be impossible to see him compete here. I’m amazed. The current MotoGP is much more physical,” recalled the Mallorcan. At the 2013 Dutch GP, he made the “biggest mistake in history” – in his own words – by breaking his collarbone on Friday and finishing fifth in the race held 35 hours later.
That episode tightened the mandatory medical protocols for the recovery of the pilots, although in the future others like Marc Márquez also attempted similar feats, undoubtedly not always with satisfactory results. The man from Cervera began an ordeal of injuries in the 2020 Spanish GP that has marked his last few seasons when he tried to compete just four days after having surgery on his right humerus for the first time. That decision then triggered three other interventions towards the full recovery of mobility in the arm.
“I felt terrible”
“The possibility of fighting for a title deserves it, at least that’s how he sees it. At the moment we look at it from a distance, but you never know if the thing can be decided by one or two points,” commented Pablo Nieto, team manager of VR46 Racing, about the decision of his pupil Bezzecchi. The young man from Rimini admitted that the person he had the hardest time convincing after making the decision to travel to the circuit was his own mother.
“On Monday, when I got home after the operation, I felt terrible. The first thing I thought was to skip the race and go straight to Australia,” he confessed. That same afternoon he started the express recovery in the gym, and his good feelings on Tuesday morning convinced him to try to get on the World Cup train. “Not everyone agreed, but Valentino understood me, because he is a pilot,” he added after his heroics in Mandalika. It remains to be seen if the demands of Saturday and the 27-lap race on Sunday do not take their toll on the protagonist of the last miraculous recovery in MotoGP.
In a World Championship marked by injuries, with only one official session of 99 held with the 22 starting drivers on the grid available, ‘Bez”s feat gains even more success. He still dreams of fighting for the title that is disputed with the other Ducatis of Bagnaia and Martín.
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