Six-time MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez suffered a nasty accident at the belated start of the 2020 season that left him sidelined for the entirety of the year. He broke his humerus chasing Fabio Quartararo for the lead of the opening round of the year, and multiple surgeries put him out of contention. Now, though, it’s looking like he might not even be able to make his comeback in 2021.
Marquez had a third surgery for the broken bone back in November because the fracture in his arm isn’t healing—which was recently discovered to be an infection, Crash.net reports.
The clinical term for his condition is pseudarthrosis, and after the infection subsides, he’ll likely have to undergo another surgery to get things properly sorted out. The surgery lasted eight hours, with bone being grafted from Marquez’s hip onto his broken humerus, as per Motorsport. Right now, that’s putting his recovery time at six months at the very least.
From a Repsol Honda statement:
Today the rider has undergone surgery at the Hospital Ruber Internacional, in Madrid, for a pseudarthrosis of the right humerus.
The surgery, carried out by a team made up of doctors Samuel Antuna, Ignacio Roger de Ona, Juan de Miguel, Aitor Ibarzabal and Andrea Garcia Villanueva, consisted of the removal of the previous plate and the placement of a new plate with the addition of an iliac crest bone graft with a corticoperiosteal free flap.
The surgical procedure lasted for eight hours and was uneventful.
A different statement notes that Marquez remained in the hospital for a while after the surgery.
Marquez’s condition may in part be come down to the fact that he tried to race on it too quickly after his initial surgery. The original plate that was surgically grafted into his arm was damaged when Marquez got on his bike the weekend following its insertion.
With the first MotoGP race in 2021 taking place on March 28, it’s unlikely Marquez will be on the bike. Had his surgery taken place at the very start of November, his recovery won’t be completed until May—in time for the fourth race of the season.
Marquez may need to take a little longer to get back in riding shape. He’ll have been off the bike for over a year at that point, and his healing body will likely be a little weak.
That said, we are talking about Marc Marquez here. He very well could power through recovery and end up back on the bike sooner than anticipated.