Current MotoGP World Champion, Marc Márquez, has been talking to the press this Wednesday at his native Cervera (Lérida) about his recovery after having undergone surgery of the right shoulder. It seems his convalescence is more complicated than initially expected. 

The seven-time MotoGP World Champion went under the knife last November in order to solve a problem in the above-mentioned joint which was in turn caused by several falls suffered by the Spaniard at the end of last season.

It was precisely to avoid the long injury he suffered on his left shoulder, which the #99 endured for several years before operating on it in 2018, that he made the decision to intervene earlier on this time. As this shoulder was in much better condition than the other one, everything pointed to a swifter recovery. 

But that doesn’t seem the be the case and, worse of all, there is just a couple of weeks left for the WRC 2020 calendar with pre-season testing sessions in Sepang. Marquez has not been up on a bike since completing the tests in November and he should do so before traveling to Malaysia, otherwise, he will not be able to obtain much data from the tests. 

“Initially the operation seemed simpler but not so the recovery time. This is why I brought the surgery forward as much as I could so as to have enough time to recover. Everything seemed easier but the recovery is being more complicated and with some difficulties”.

“Last year I regained fitness just in time for the tests and this year will be similar. In the last two weeks, we have taken a step forward, but before Reyes [‘Three Kings Day’ holiday, January 6] I was not at all optimistic“, declared the pilot at an event organized by Repsol, his team’s main sponsor -.

After that, Marquez has talked about his intense rehabilitation program which should take him to tip-top shape for the start of the season: “I’m doing two hours of rehab in the morning and two more in the afternoon, I’m spending almost the whole day on my body, trying to improve, because I am trying to make it to the first tests in Sepang, but always being mindful of the fact that the first race is in Qatar and that there are deadlines to be met.”

The champion has also compared his sensations between the first and second interventions: “The recovery hasn’t been more intense than last year’s, it was less painful but more difficult. The doctors warned me that when you open up the shoulder there are a lot of nerves and muscles and that they could touch something that could affect the mobility of certain muscles that are very important for the shoulder (…)”

“(…) and that’s what we are working on. In fact, up until two weeks ago, I had zero strength and I couldn’t even lift a glass of water. But over the past few days, the nerve has been stimulated and has started to respond and we’ve improved quite a bit.” – he has continued.

 

Undoubtedly, any weakness on the side of Marquez will be welcomed by the rivals that are trying to dethrone him. In any case, if his physical issues persist, they will only impact on the first few races of the season, or at least that’s what the pilot from Repsol Honda believes: 

“It’s hard to know what kind of season we’ll have. In any case, the shoulder is not going to deprive me of anything as last year I managed the training and the first three or four races.”

 This year I hope to be able to go flat out from the first race. It is going to be a season with very equal rivals. It seems that winning the title last year was easy to do but it wasn’t. This year rivals are surely going to be more competitive”.

 Images: Marc Marcquez Twitter