Scott Russell won the 1993 World Superbike Championship because he had a good bike, a good team, good tires, and, most of all, a high pain threshold.
During qualifying for the British round of the championship the smooth-riding Georgian suffered injuries that would have hobbled most people for weeks. But Russell didn't have time to be hobbled. He had a championship to win and he was racing against his toughest rival, Carl Fogarty, who had home field advantage. So even after he was launched from the saddle of his ZX-7RR superbike during qualifying at Donington Park, he was going to race the next day - once he came back to earth.
"Cracked tailbone, broken ankle, but the Italian doctors missed all that, as they do," Russell says. "They don't care. They want to stick you with this and that and get you back on the track and that's all I needed. So the next day, they basically carried me and put me on the bike and I won both races and won the world championship that year. Without that day of me riding through that pain, I would've never been a world champion."
Race long enough and you'll get hurt. Racing injured isn't heroic, it's essential. And you won't have the luxury of an extended convalescence. Valentino Rossi returned for the German Grand Prix six weeks after breaking his leg in Mugello, but the more grievous injury was to his right shoulder. Rossi suffered soft tissue damage to the right shoulder in an April motocross accident. At the time, not much was made of it. But after he returned from the broken leg, he was more forthcoming about the extent of the shoulder injury. At the Japanese Grand Prix in Motegi he admitted the shoulder problem contributed to the crash during practice at Mugello that broke his leg.
Valentino Rossi finished third at the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca while still using crutches after breaking his leg in Mugello. "It is a bit more difficult at Laguna compared to Sachsenring especially for my leg and also a little for my shoulder."
"I'm sure that also my injury from the leg is coming from the problem of the shoulder. Because if I am at 100 percent maybe I did not make that mistake in Mugello, so I stop with motocross and I need to be more careful for the future." Rossi's shoulder injury also highlighted how even the best riders with access to the best medicine don't always get the best advice. The initial medical advice Rossi heard was that the shoulder would recover on its own. Surgery wouldn't be needed. The recovery would be complete by the end of the summer break. "So maybe try to manage the championship, try to win anyway. But looking now," he said in Motegi, "is very difficult, also without the problem of the leg." Clearly his convalescence would have been sped up if he'd had surgery earlier, but just as clearly his season would've been over.
"I honestly think I hit the...
"I honestly think I hit the deck and thought, 'I'm retiring,'" Neil Hodgson said of his crash at Brands Hatch that re-injured his shoulder and forced him to retire. "It was horrible doing something not as good as you know you can."
Shoulder injuries are among the worst, most riders agree, and riders often suffer the injuries doing things other than roadracing. Neil Hodgson had the worst crash of his career while on a motocross track. When the former World Superbike champion crashed at Racetown 395 in Adelanto, California, in March of 2009 he knew it was the worst of his career. Hodgson returned later in the AMA Superbike season, but his shoulder was never right and his results suffered. Nor was it right when he crashed in practice for the 2010 British Superbike Championship season-opener at Brands Hatch. When the rear wheel stepped out, Hodgson didn't have the strength to fight it. When he landed on his shoulder, he knew his career was over.
Mick Doohan suffered such...
Mick Doohan suffered such a severely broken leg in 1992 that there was talk of amputation. Only the intervention of Dr. Costa prevented it. Then began a long and brutally painful recovery that ended with Doohan returning for the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paolo. Anyone who was there will never forget Doohan, his leg withered by atrophy, approaching his Rothmans NSR500 on crutches.
Kevin Schwantz and Cagiva's Eddie Lawson came together at Assen in 1992, the same race where Rothmans Honda's Mick Doohan suffered near career ending injuries. Schwantz suffered a dislocated and broken hip, and a left arm with two broken bones that had to be plated. The doctor told him that "typically they don't want you to do anything for six weeks; they want you to wear a brace to keep your leg straight, a knee brace, so that you can't bend your knee, because bending your knee really allows you to throw your leg around," Schwantz explained. "And then not a compound fracture of the arm, but both bones broken and a plate in it. You'd have to think four to six weeks is what the average doctor would say there. A plate of course is going to give it a little more strength, a little quicker than normal. I should've probably watched for a month anyway."