Kevin Strijbos went under the surgeon’s knife yesterday morning, his team announced today in a press release. The 31-year-old now faces months of recovery before he can get back on the bike.
The Suzuki World MXGP rider attempted to suffer through the pain in his elbow at last weekend’s MXGP of Europe at Valkenswaard in the Netherlands, but the injury he sustained at the Trentino GP the week prior proved too much to bear.
The former British champion was only able to get through half of the opening moto before being forced to retire for the weekend.
After consultations with doctors, it was decided that Strijbos would undergo surgery, which was successfully completed yesterday morning. The team reports that the operation to repair a tear in the tendon and remove the inflammation in his elbow went well but he will miss the next few rounds of the World Motocross Championship.
It’s another injury blow for the likeable Belgian who has been hit with several injuries over the past two seasons.
“Sunday night I was in so much pain, so I knew we had to do the operation,” said Strijbos. “Dr De Schrijver who has operated on me before performed the surgery and he said it went well.
“The tear has been fixed and the inflammation removed. Now I am in a cast for a week or 10 days, with the plan then to remove it and see how the recovery is going. If all goes well, I’ll replace the cast with a brace so I can start to do some more things with it. From then on, we have to see how it goes before I can give a real estimate for my next race. Prior to the operation, they said it’d be around four weeks before I can start mountain biking and then six weeks before I can be back riding motocross, only if everything goes really, really well.
“I prefer to take it week by week though and see how it’s progressing because I don’t want to come back too early and have the inflammation return. I’m going to rest-up for now and try to let it heal as much as possible before this next check-up. Then we’ll have a bit more of an idea about my recovery period.”
The team’s General Manager, Stefan Everts, said: “We’re extremely disappointed to lose Kevin for these upcoming races, but unfortunately injuries are a big part of our sport. Of course, everyone here wishes him the best with his recovery and that we’ll see him at the races soon.”
For the Suzuki World MXGP squad, it’s another season where they are down to one rider for several rounds (‘several’ sounds overly optimistic to us), in this case, their sole representative is Arminas Jasikonis who put in a career best for Suzuki at the Euro Circuit last week with a seventh overall.
