Hayden Shrugs off Injury

Henny Ray Abrams | August 26, 2010

INDIANAPOLIS, IN, AUG. 26 – Ducati Marlboro’s Nicky Hayden isn’t about going to let a broken bone slow him down.The two-time podium finisher at Indianapolis Motor Speedway said his left wrist had healed somewhat since breaking it during qualifying for the Czech Grand Prix 12 days ago. The fact that it was his left wrist, rather than the right, which he uses for braking, made the damage less severe. And the injury itself wasn’t as serious as others he’s suffered in the same area.At the pre-race press conference for Sunday’s third annual Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix, Hayden said he’d told Monster Yamaha Tech 3’s Colin Edwards that he always holds onto the bike too long “thinking I’m going to save it, save it, and the bike landed on it. Definitely wasn’t real fun there in Brno for the race.

“The wrist was checked out by Dr. Claudio Costa at the Clinica Mobile immediately afterwards. Hayden also got a follow up scan and x-ray when he returned home to Kentucky, “because I have a screw in my left wrist too, right in the scaphoid area where they were worried about, because at the Clinica, they can’t sometimes see 100% on an x-ray and it’s so close to that scaphoid bone. They say it needs a couple of days before it can really show up.”So went home, my doctor and another doctor checked it over and some normal therapy, ultra-sounds and things like that. But, you know, I maybe get another x-ray in a week or two or see how it’s still healing, but I don’t expect no surgery or nothing like that.”He added that after the morning warm-up in Brno he was hoping for rain which never came. But he was pleasantly surprised by his race result-“managed to do maybe even one better than we thought”-and has had the ensuing time to heal up.”Have had about ten days and, I mean, we know bones don’t heal up 100% in ten days,” he said. “Us riders think they can sometimes and they should, but it’s certainly a lot better than it was last week and this track doesn’t have the hard braking you had in Brno. I really don’t expect big, big problems with it. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. But, you know, left wrist is a lot better than the right wrist. We’ll see, but I’m hoping for no big problems. We ain’t got time to be messing around with sore wrists this weekend. We gotta go for it.To test out the wrist, Hayden said he rode without complications a few days ago at his home in Owensboro, but he didn’t “push it. But my home race, so it’s not going to get caught up thinking about it too much, just ride. So I don’t really…I mean I’ll see tomorrow. Braking on one of these things is a little different than riding up your driveway, backyard type thing, but we’ll be alright.”