Clement Desalle’s scary crash during the Grand Prix of Italy at Maggiora in June carried a hefty price as the Suzuki star is now wading through another winter of recovery after surgery to fix a broken scaphoid.
The Belgian had an operation to inject blood and insert two screws into the notoriously tricky wrist bone during the first two weeks of August in his native country and has since utilised two different casts over the reminder of the month.
The winner of Grands Prix in Trentino, Spain, France and Germany this year has half of his left arm in a cast as the wrist cannot be rotated through the initial stages of rehab. Desalle hopes that he might be able to start using his wrist for everyday activities by the end of September but depending on the strength and feeling of his hand any motorcycling or motocrossing might have to wait until the early throes of winter.
“It has been pretty complicated to fix the problem and I have to be careful with the wrist because any problem in this area with the bones can cause a chain effect,” he explained. “So it is pretty slow but it depends on how it will go with the rehab once the cast has gone.”
“I hope I can start doing normal things by the end of the month and then some cycling and other stuff,” he continued. “I was told it could take as much as three months before I am back on my bike. We will see. I don’t want to rush anything or take any risks; there is no sense in that.”
Desalle made the decision to prematurely end his racing season at the Grand Prix of Czech Republic at the end of July that was round 14 of the series. He had been struggling with pain in the wrist since the excursion in Italy. The subsequent process has been another tough time for the 25-year-old who also needed the off-seasons of 2011 and 2013 to recover from shoulder surgeries. Desalle is all but confirmed with fourth position in the 2014 MXGP standings.
