No.1 JST rider Michael Brown was back in WTC action after his knee injury and it was a hard weekend for him. To even ride a bike so soon after surgery is good work. Yes he finished 2nd at last weeks BTC but at World level it is completely different with the severity of sections. Michael’s range of movement on his knee/leg is limited and he cannot bend nowhere near enough to compress before any big step. Also when you carry even a small injury at this level it affects your confidence a lot.
Michael rode with little confidence and asked for five ‘fives’ each lap knowing that he couldn’t do the sections without fully bending. The sections he rode, he actually rode well considering and he managed 14th on Saturday and a better 11th yesterday. So that’s 7 world points for the weekend. The positive news is that he has not done any more damage to his knee and now needs daily physio and gym work to get the movement back as soon as possible. I was thinking of pulling him out of this weekends one day WTC Spain giving him a full two weeks to prepare for WTC Italy and Czecho but Michael was quite positive on the flight back last night and will do all he can this week to improve the movement before Sundays Spanish round.
A big congratulations must go to the GG girls Katy Sunter and Nikita Smith. Both struggled a bit on Saturday finishing 8th and 15th respectively. Having got more acclimatized to the conditions they both upped their game considerably yesterday with Katy in 4th and Nikita 6th. This is especially good for Nikita who is still riding a 125cc which really struggle on power against the bigger bikes especially at the high altitude of Andorra. Well done to you both.