Steve Cox | December 17, 2018
Jeremy Martin Out for 2019: The GEICO Honda team just announced that their star 250cc racer, Jeremy Martin, will miss the entire 2019 racing season after he has been forced to get his back surgery re-done. The two-time 250cc National Champion had just taken control of the 2018 250cc National Motocross Championship when he was side-swiped in mid-air off the start of the second moto early in the series at Muddy Creek Raceway in Blountville, Tennessee, sending him tumbling and breaking his back.
After surgery and many months of rehab, doctors have determined that Martin’s first back surgery was not successful, and it’ll have to be re-done. Martin had five vertebrae fused after the crash to help heal a burst fracture in his lower back, but six months after he began rehabilitating the injury, he found out the burst fracture had only healed 10 percent.
Jeremy Martin Out For 2019
He has a new surgery scheduled for January at the Steadman Clinic in Colorado, after which he’ll have to start rehab all over again. However, on the positive side, the GEICO Honda team stepped up and renewed their commitment to Martin, extending his contract (which was originally set to expire at the end of the 2019 season) through the 2021 season.
“To get this news was a complete kick in the gut,” Martin said. “Racing is all I know and to sit out the entire 2019 season is going to be one of the biggest challenges I have ever faced. To have [team owners] Jeff [Majkrzak] and Ziggy [Rick Zielfelder] commit to me long-term proves they believe in me, and that motivates me to come back and overcome adversity. That’s been the story of my career, though. Nothing has been given to me, I have worked and earned everything I’ve won. This will be no different.”
Martin should be back on the track in anger by 2020. With him out, the 2019 GEICO Honda race team will be made up of Christian Craig, RJ Hampshire, Chase Sexton, and exciting GP veteran from Australia, Hunter Lawrence.
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