Kevin Windham Updates???

[JST122]

Has anyone heard any new Kevin Windham updates as far as how his injury is healing and when he plans to come back? I think the last thing I heard was that he was going to sit out the entire supercross season and come back for the Outdoor National opener at Hangtown. Just curious if anyone has heard anything else.

 

[Sandjunky]

Has anyone heard any new Kevin Windham updates as far as how his injury is healing and when he plans to come back? I think the last thing I heard was that he was going to sit out the entire supercross season and come back for the Outdoor National opener at Hangtown. Just curious if anyone has heard anything else.

He is shooting for Orlando. Here is an interview from Supercross.com

One factory rider we've missed so far this ‘06 season due to a preseason crash, is #14 Kevin Windham. He was signing autographs (without a cast!), and I wanted to catch up with him and find out where he stands with the recovery on his injured arm.

If you remember back at the Anaheim 1 press conference, Kevin spoke briefly about his crash. "After hernia surgery, everything was looking up for me. I had motivation and was riding well, but a small crash during practice, coming out of a whoop section, I lost my front end, over a little double, I lost the bike and came down on my arm, breaking both bones, I had a compound fracture giving me 2 plates and 11 screws in a blink of an eye."

Angela: I don't see your arm in a sling any more. How are you healing up? Last time we spoke you were going to talk with your doctor the next day too.

Kevin: The doctor's visit went awesome! My ulna, which is a small bone in my arm, is completely healed. I actually had three fracture lines and I had to have a bone graph as well, so it's not quite ready, but the good news it that I can go back to full training. I just have to stay off the bike for three more weeks then I'll start riding.


Hopefully after three weeks of being on the bike I'll be able to come back to competition, which will be somewhere around Orlando, which will leave me with six Supercross races to ride this season. It's good to have a target date you know? With an injury like this, when you first get hurt there's a lot of questions as to how everything is going to come back together, but finally things are starting to pull through. I kind of made the turn on the injury and look forward to getting back out there for some of the supercross races this year.

A: How is your arm feeling?

K: Well, with such a bad break there was a lot of pain. The great thing about having surgery is that as soon as they put the plates in a lot of the pain goes away. So as soon as I had surgery things have been really good, as long as I do what the doctors say and I don't push it to hard. There is some pain and there's some muscle damage, but other than that the pain has been relatively low, so I have been very lucky with that.

A: How are you feeling being in the background as this fight for the championship goes on?

K: It's been an exciting year so far. I wish Chad Reed could be up there a little bit tighter with James and Ricky going at each other. I think it will continue on and I hope it does for the remainder of the season, and that gives the fans something to be excited about.

My goal right now is to focus on the outdoors but I would love to come back and get a couple of good races under my belt and run with those guys later during the season. That would definitely be a good goal for me right now, but those guys are racing incredibly well, and I have a long road ahead of me to get on that level from where I stand today. It can be done, it's just a matter of how long it will take.

A: Well, it's great to see you here, getting back in the swing of things and getting healthy to race!

K: Yeah absolutely, it's been a tough break but it's been one where I've learned some things and I've looked at different avenues of the racing world. Racing is my life - interacting with the fans, doing interviews, web-casting and things like that, so it's been nice to be behind the scenes ... but I am a racer so it's time to get back on the track. It's just great to have a date to look forward to right now so I can work hard to achieve being ready for Orlando.

A: I know you can't wait to get back to racing, but how long after you get back on the practice track can we expect to see you racing supercross?

K: On the 28th of February I'll be 28 years old, so I have another year after that in my contract and after that who knows. I think 30 is pretty young to be thinking about retirement but I am not a spring chicken anymore either. There are some kids coming in here at 16/17 years old, guys like Ryan Villopoto & Jake Weimer coming up in the ranks. You keep seeing these new young guys coming in, so I guess the amount of guys older than me are getting fewer and fewer. Just as long as Mike LaRocco stays around then I still kind of have hope. I always pick on him about his age, but I still feel like I can do it, and as long as I have that feeling I am going to be around.

With age comes great experience and you see that with riders like Mike LaRocco who are still battling out there. Right now, the biggest part of the sport is the fact that it's 16 races pretty much in a row for supercross, with only two off-weekends in a 16 week period. It's tougher as you start to get a little older. It's hard to get over let's say a sprained ankle and be ready 6 days later. That's the toughest part of what we do - the week in and week out without much of a break. You might see people up in their 40's if you had a series where we took a few weeks off between rounds, but the schedule is really brutal. When things go bad, it's like a domino's effect in this sport. It's tough to ride injured and it's tough to make a recovery and be ready for the gate to drop the following weekend.

I am definitely ready to get back to racing. It's been good to be around here but I am ready to go back to racing soon and I'm looking forward to the return.


I can see the fire in Kevin's eyes as he talks about returning. Kevin's a true racer, with so much resilience and determination to return. As he said, the Orlando supercross is his target goal if all goes well, and the outdoor nationals is his priority for the ‘06 season.

 

[JST122]

Thanks I appreciate it. I hadnt seen that article and I thought the last thing I had heard was that he was just going to wait until the start of the nationals so it is good to see that he will be back for atleast the last few rounds of SX if all goes well.