Lorenzo Undergoes Successful Surgery; MotoGP Return Unknown

2013 Jorge Lorenzo Assen Crash Injury Update

Yamaha Factory Racing’s Jorge Lorenzo broke his shoulder Thursday during the second free practice for the Dutch Grand Prix at Assen.

The reigning MotoGP Champion, whose luck is not so good at Assen due to crashes during the last three years, could not get immediate surgery in the Netherlands, so his team flew him to Barcelona, Spain.

And on Friday morning, Yamaha Factory Racing reported the Spaniard underwent successful surgery in the early morning hours at the Hospital General de Catalunya in Barcelona last night to repair his fractured left collarbone.

Though surgery was successful, Lorenzo still wasn’t evaluated, so its unknown when the two-time MotoGP Champion will return to the series.

Completing the operation was Dr. Joaquin Rodriguez of the Hospital General de Catalunya, who was assisted by Dr. Ana Carreras, Dr. Marcos Cots and Dr. Michele Zasa of the Clinica Mobile.

Dr. Zasa says: “The duration of the surgery was approximately two hours; the clinical course of post-operative has been regular. Jorge sustained a displaced, complex fracture to the third medial of the left collarbone.

“It’s been a challenging operation, apparently successful. We inserted a titanium plate and eight screws to secure the fragments of the collarbone.

“Jorge has just woken up from the anesthesia. In the next few hours we will evaluate the progress of the patient and then we will be able to estimate how long the post-surgery rehabilitation will take.”

Wilco Zeelenberg ( Yamaha Factory Racing Team Manager) says: “Following the medical check at the Circuit’s Medical Centre first and at the Assen Hospital later, yesterday Jorge decided to be operated as soon as possible.

“Unfortunately no operation room was available in Assen due to some other very urgent life threatening operations that had much higher priority than Jorge’s collarbone and therefore we flew to Barcelona, where a surgery room was made available at the Hospital General de Catalunya.

“The surgery, that started at 2 a.m. and finished at 4 a.m. has had good results and now Jorge is sleeping, exhausted from such a long and tough day. We have to wait till he wakes up before making any further evaluation of Jorge’s physical conditions and how long his recovery will take.”

As of this writing, Lorenzo trailed MotoGP Championship leader Dani Pedrosa (Repsol Honda) by seven points after six of 18 rounds.