Slaw
Jo Shimoda is not expected to return until the SuperMotocross World Championship Playoffs later this year, according to Honda HRC Progressive team manager Lars Lindstrom, who provided an update during the post-race press conference at Spring Creek.
“SMX is the goal,” Lindstrom said. “We’ll see if we’re feeling better in the amount of time it takes to ride maybe the last couple of rounds of motocross, but right now I think the focus is going to be SMX.”
Shimoda entered Round 6 of the Pro Motocross Championship at Southwick with a four-point lead over Cole Davies in the 250 Class standings. However, a crash during the second qualifying session resulted in a concussion and a fractured left collarbone, forcing him to miss the event and score zero points.
After missing the motos at Southwick and Spring Creek, he trails new points leader Levi Kitchen by 67.
“I truly feel disgusted on how Saturday went,”said Shimoda last week in a team release. “Coming in with the points lead, it was really unfortunate to end up with a small crash and a small injury that’s enough to get me out of the series. But one thing that we can take away is that I feel really confident in myself to find my way back to the top level, no matter where the starting point is or under any circumstance.”
Following Spring Creek, Lindstrom revealed the injury was one of the strangest situations he has encountered, explaining that there was a point early last week when the team believed Shimoda might even be able to race at Spring Creek after initial scans produced conflicting results.
“It was the oddest thing that I’ve been a part of I think as far as a physical injury,” he said. “It was at the track at Southwick, the Alpinestars medical guys saw a break in his collarbone and he went to the hospital because of his concussion just to make sure that everything was okay, which it was. And when they were there, they took a different X-ray and they said it was broken also, but it was hard to see. Then we couldn’t really see it. Jo’s agent and him couldn’t really tell. Felt pretty good. Didn’t feel like it was … It felt like it hurt, but it wasn’t like if you break your collarbone and it’s broken in two pieces, you know it. There’s no real question there. But since he already had a plate there from a previous injury, it was kind of hard to tell.
“So they went and got a CT scan done. And in the CT scan it came back from the radiologist and said, “Your bone’s not broken.” So then we were like, “Whoa.” This is Monday and we were like, “Maybe he can ride.” It could have been Tuesday, maybe. And so we were ecstatic. We thought that he could be back. He actually suited up and rode on Wednesday and tried. And when he rode, he could ride. It felt okay. But when he hit any jump, it was pretty big pain. When that happened, he’s like, “Something’s wrong. It can’t be this way.” So he went to a different doctor. This is like the fifth guy by the way. And they went to a specialist and he looked at the X-ray and he could see that there was a break underneath the plate. It’s not a complete dislocation or the bone’s not completely separated, but it is broken and it’s basically like a splinter sticking up. So the odd part about was that he already had the plate with six screws in it, three on each side. So to fix it and try to come back, they would’ve had to remove all those, which means that there’s six empty holes from the bones that need to heal. And they can’t put another plate over that. The whole thing would be super brittle and it’d be compromised. There wasn’t really much they could do other than, “Hey, you got to wait four to six weeks.” And so that’s kind of how that ended. We were hopeful and he was going to get the concussion protocol because his head felt good. And then that kind of just died. So, it was a little bit of a bummer.”
With the Pro Motocross title now out of reach, Honda HRC Progressive will instead focus on having Shimoda healthy for the opening round of the SuperMotocross World Championship Playoffs, where he won the title a season ago.
