August 14, 2008 - Kenny Pryde

Nicky Hayden has injured his foot and will miss the Brno GP. Will there be a replacement rider at Repsol Honda? Okada? Kiyonari? Er... ... Scroll down for the full story

After its summer holidays, the MotoGP paddock regroups at Brno in the Czech republic this weekend (15-17th August). The circuit has been resurfaced since the last race – although Ducati has done some tyre testing.

But the big news was that Repsol Honda rider Nicky Hayden injured a foot during the summer break and will miss Brno. In spite of the rabid speculation about him being replaced by Tady Okada or world superbike rider Ryuichi Kiyonari, we've been told that there will be no replacement and that Hayden will be back in action at Misano at the of the month.

Anyway, Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner will no doubt be going at it hammer and tongs again. The funniest pre-event quote we saw was from Rossi's Yamaha team mate Jorge Lorenzo.

The high-bouncing young Spaniard said, "I am going to Brno with a high hopes and above all trying not to think about the disappointment of Laguna Seca; it's behind me now. In the USA I was fast once again and I hope that I can carry on like this in the Czech Republic. I know that I can. Brno is a circuit that I like a lot, it's one of my favourites. I've won there three times in 125cc and 250cc. It's a good place for my riding style and the weather is normally perfect. Physically I feel very good after the crash and the injuries, I definitely feel as good as could be expected. It's the first time this season that I've really had proper time to recover, thanks to the holidays, so I think I am in good shape. At the moment I am still using my crutches to walk but I have been able to do some training and I know that I won't have a problem when I arrive in Brno on Thursday."

Terrific. He's walking with crutches but reckons he'll be fit for the weekend. What a warrior. Or lunatic.

One rider who won't be there is Nicky Hayden of Repsol Honda who injured his foot riding a supermoto at the X-Games. The X-Games – the 'X' stands for 'extreme' apparently, which just goes to prove that America really is destroying the mother tongue.

"The injury is to a weight-bearing part of the foot and the doctors say that using too much pressure on the 'pegs could very easily give me some big problems,” says Hayden who was riding a Honda CRF450 Supermoto bike and didn't crash in the incident.
“I went to Dr Ting and got the opinion of other specialists. I've done a lot with Ting, he knows the sport very well and he feels it would be quite risky to ride. He and the other specialists say that if I rode this week I might have to fight the injury for the rest of the year.
“As hard a decision as it is and as bad as I feel about it, I think I'm better off staying home doing rehab and physio, then come back fit at Misano and try to finish the season strong. There's been a lot of guys this year trying to ride less than a hundred per cent and actually making their problems worse.
“I certainly feel bad about it for my team and I apologise. I had the permission of HRC to do the Supermoto thing. I just wanted to do some riding during the break, have some fun and I thought that maybe it'd give me a little spark for the rest of the season, but it backfired on me.”