News 15 Dec 2016

Long undergoes successful wrist surgery following training incident

CDR Yamaha's latest signing expecting two-month recovery.

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

Newly-signed CDR Yamaha rider Dylan Long has undergone successful surgery on his broken scaphoid sustained during an unfortunate training incident at a ride park in Victoria last weekend.

Long, who had only spent three laps aboard the factory Yamaha YZ450F, shared details of the incident with MotoOnline.com.au, revealing he collided with a bike on the base of a jump from an accident that had occurred just seconds prior.

“A girl was rolling a tabletop and another guy came along and landed on top of her,” Long explained. “They crashed at the bottom of the down ramp, I came around about five or six seconds later and no one had really noticed their crash. The bike was still on the ground, I jumped the tabletop and hit the bike – I had a huge crash, knocked myself out and actually broke my scaphoid.

“I had surgery on that last Sunday and I’ll be out for a little while. I’ve been speaking to Greg Harris from Racesafe and I’ve been in hyperbaric chambers since it happened. It’s hard to say [how long the recovery will be] with a scaphoid, you’ve got to see how it’s healing in a couple of weeks time to see if the blood is going through to the bone and all that sort of stuff – if it doesn’t heal properly, then you have to get a bone graft, and that’s a bit of a stuff around. Generally, I think it will be a month or two [for recovery].”

The Victorian isn’t concerned about the recovery affecting his preparation for the new season, which isn’t due to commence until the beginning of April. Long mentioned his fitness is at an adequate level, although he’ll just be lacking bike time time as the Motul MX Nationals series approaches.

“I have a really good team behind me and the bike will be setup for me pretty well, so I don’t think there will be much more to do to it. I won’t be coming in [to the season] with as much bike time as what I wanted to, but I’ll definitely be prepared – there’s no doubt about that,” he continued.

“I’ve been training my arse off since I knew I wasn’t doing supercross, so I’m definitely going to be prepared fitness wise, I might just start off a little slow without the bike time – I think should still be fine, to be honest.”

It was only announced last month that Long would join defending MX1 champion Dean Ferris at CDR Yamaha, completing the outfit’s line-up for the 2017 motocross championship.

Recent