23-year-old Queenslander Brenden Harrison has experienced more bad luck, injuries and surgeries than most blokes twice his age. The past three years have been strewn with broken bones, surgery complications and heartache.

It all came to a head two weeks ago when he revealed his re-broken femur hadn’t healed properly and he’d need a bone graft. The crux was he again faces a lengthy recovery and is now hoping to make his return for the 2013 supercross season.

MotoOnline caught up with him and asked him a series of tough questions to see find out what’s really going on.

Brenden Harrison has suffered a very tough run of injuries over the past few years. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

First and foremost, why are you sitting on the sofa hammering Call Of Duty when you should be training for the MX Nationals?

I just had another operation on the femur that I broke between the Horsham and Appin rounds of the MX Nationals last year. It was complicated and even then there was the possibility I’d need a bone graft, but I waited it out as long as I can.

My surgeon told me there’s one part of the bone that hasn’t healed properly, so two weeks ago I had an operation and they grafted someone else’s bone onto my femur. I can only hope that it’s strong, but I’m so over this.

Why did it happen in the first place?

I originally broke my femur in 2010, when I came back racing I experienced groin pains, so I got the screws taken out of my hip. I raced all of 2011 motocross season with these bad groin pains, so I then had the femur rod removed to see if that would help, but it was the same story through the Super X.

I crashed at the last round at Ipswich and broke the base of my skull and hand, and went in for CT scans for my neck and femurs. As it turned out the head of my broken femur was off by 39 degrees and was hitting my pelvis so hard my pelvis had indented, which explained my groin pains!

My new surgeon re-broke my femur, straightened it up and put a rod through it. I also had my neck in a brace and a cast on my wrist, so I looked like a war victim. At the beginning of last year I came back to racing but my hand hadn’t healed properly. They ended up re-breaking and plating two knuckles, and pulled the screws out of my hip and knee at the same time.

I returned to the series at Horsham, but then had a practice crash just before Appin and re-broke the femur with a spiral fracture around the rod. When I woke up from the operation I had lost 75 percent of my blood, and the operation had been long and complicated.

They told me there was the chance I’d need a bone graft, so I sat the rest of the year out, and started training in January. It felt good, but when I saw my surgeon he gave me the bad news that it hadn’t healed properly in the six months since the crash and I’d need the bone graft.

Harrison hopes that this most recent surgery will be fix the ongoing issues. Image: Simon Makker/Makkreative.com.

Why did the surgery in 2012 go wrong?

There was a big piece of bone missing in the spiral break and it was too big for the bone to knit back up. Everything else was fine except one screwed up bit. It was frustrating because I felt I could do everything fine, but now I’m back to square one. The surgeon reckons this will be it though. I’m hoping like hell it is.

Why are you getting such a rotten run of luck?

I honestly don’t know. I think I’m a pretty respectful, reasonable guy, so I don’t really know why this is happening to me. Maybe I’ve got to start being an arsehole to people. They always seem to get what they want [laughs].

Why do you think you’ll come back faster and stronger than ever?

I feel like I’ve had that much shit luck that I want to win again so badly. I’m so used to feeling down and I crave that feeling of being on top of the world again. The victory will be sweeter and I’m still training hard with upper-body workouts. My upper body is the strongest it’s ever been and once I start running again it won’t take my legs long to regain their strength.

Why are you still so determined to give motocross a serious crack? Why not just walk away?

I guess a big part of it is to honour the memory of my old man and to win championships for him. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or anything, but we used to spend a lot of time together at the races and we grew really close because of it.

I want to keep racing for myself as well, injuries are a part of motocross and a lot of people have told me they’d walk away in the same situation, but that’s not who I am. I just want to ride and I just want to win races.