Marc Marquez has revealed he will be forced to undergo surgery on his right shoulder in the wake of a crash that dislocated it during post-season MotoGP testing at Valencia.
In what could be an early setback in his quest for a seventh MotoGP World Championship title in 2020, Marquez suffered a low speed crash on Monday when he slipped on a wet surface offline.
Despite this, the awkward impact caused him to dislocate his shoulder and aggravate the injuries he picked up in Thailand and then again in Sepang when he suffered fall during Malaysian MotoGP qualifying.
Though Marquez has been back on track today riding the 2020 specification Honda RC213V, the conclusion of 2019 MotoGP track action means a definitive decision has been taken to go under the knife on the troublesome right shoulder in an effort to avoid any future complications.
Coming twelve months after he underwent a similar operation his left shoulder and left him enduring a winter of recovery, Marquez admits he is not relishing the prospect of convalescing yet again.
“This winter I would have liked to have a nice holiday and enjoy a bit of quiet time after a great 2019 – but it is time to have surgery on the right shoulder. As everyone knows, last winter was very tough for me with the operation on the left shoulder, which was very, very damaged.
“I want to avoid the situation where my right shoulder is in this condition in the future so I spoke a lot with the doctors to see what our options were. Before Motegi I had some issues with the shoulder and then after the crash in Malaysia I had a subluxation.
“Here at the test I had another subluxation after the crash, so we decided with the doctors that it was best to have the surgery to avoid the situation we had with the other shoulder. It will take more or less the same time and we will work in the same way to arrive at the Malaysia test as strong as possible.”
How could this affect Marc Marquez’s 2020 MotoGP hopes?
The 2019 MotoGP season out on track may have been almost perfect, but Marc Marquez has bookended it with two painful operations on different shoulders.
Marquez is wise beyond his years and while Monday’s crash certainly doesn’t rank highly in terms of pain, he is recognising that the limb has taken a battering this year and it could take only one more crash to become far more serious. As such, Marquez is cancelling his holiday and booking some hospital time for the greater good whether he ultimately needs it or not.
With the best doctors available to him, there is little doubt Marquez will bounce back in 2020 as strongly as he did in 2019. However, this is his second notable crash in as many weeks on the new machine, while those huge accidents in Thailand and Malaysia show that while Marquez is fast and smooth on race day, he still hits the Tarmac as hard as anyone when it inevitably has to go wrong.
We have until February for track action to restart again but this should be seen as an opportunity for Marquez’s rivals to get into the factory and the gym to get some additional studying and training to their advantage…
