Marc Marquez faces six-month layoff after third surgery on arm

MotoGP Forum

Help Support MotoGP Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Incredible, even after such situation he is not humbled nor does he take his responsibilities...what is he doing instead ? Officially blaming the doctors !!!!

https://www.crash.net/motogp/news/9...togp-return-was-mistake-points-finger-doctors

Pathetic...no doctor worth their license to practice would tell a rider they are okay to ride....he heard what he wanted to hear, and not what the doctors were actually saying to him...

Good luck in his recovery...hopefully he will learn something eventually!
 
Well, we know he does have character flaws along with his incredible ability on a motorcycle.

It does seem a little uncouth to publicly shift responsibility.........unless the doctors actually gave him clearance to ride. What was the position of HRC and Puig at that point?

These are questions we don’t know the answers to yet. MM has opened that can of worms with his statement. I expect we‘ll see defense played here shortly.
 
This is a situation with established consequences and yet to be seen consequences. There will understandably be a lot of denial, cognitive dissonance with the consequent shifting of blame.

I recall Puig denying that the break in the plate had nothing to do with Marq's early return but that it happened at home. I found that quite the statement for him to be making at the time.
 
Re Puig and the statement about the home accident : it might be an insurance story, ie some insurance would cover home accident and therefore it would be the insurance that pays a) all the hospital + treatment fees for Marc but more importantly b) would cover Marc’s salary too !

If worst comes to worst imagine the financial loss for Honda to pay Marc until 2024 assuming he cant ride anymore.

Better for them to have an accident insurance pay hence the possible make up on home incident

Obvioulsy the insurance will contest and it will end up in court
 
I recall Puig denying that the break in the plate had nothing to do with Marq's early return but that it happened at home. I found that quite the statement for him to be making at the time.

I remember that statement about the window and also thought it to be a strange thing to say at that moment. I mean, really? Nothing to do with racing a motorcycle??? When MM plainly said he “felt something” when he was riding in that session, after which he pulled in and didn’t ride after that.
 
This is a situation with established consequences and yet to be seen consequences. There will understandably be a lot of denial, cognitive dissonance with the consequent shifting of blame.

I recall Puig denying that the break in the plate had nothing to do with Marq's early return but that it happened at home. I found that quite the statement for him to be making at the time.

MM himself has put it down to the early return and said attempting to race is what broke the plate among his recent statements.
 
Well, we know he does have character flaws along with his incredible ability on a motorcycle.

It does seem a little uncouth to publicly shift responsibility.........unless the doctors actually gave him clearance to ride. What was the position of HRC and Puig at that point?

These are questions we don’t know the answers to yet. MM has opened that can of worms with his statement. I expect we‘ll see defense played here shortly.

Perhaps too much significance should not be placed on one word particularly when a quote may have been translated from Spanish or whatever, but one recent quote from him is that the doctors failed to convince him not to ride, which hardly sounds like he was encouraged to ride.
 
Incredible, even after such situation he is not humbled nor does he take his responsabilities...what is he doing instead ? Officially blaming the doctors !!!!

https://www.crash.net/motogp/news/9...togp-return-was-mistake-points-finger-doctors

.... off.
He is 100% correct, protocols are in place to save athletes from themselves in every single sport. FFS guys ride the TT every ....... year despite the obvious dangers. Only morons like you and the Valeban would heap .... on Marquez for doing something every single successful athlete has and would do. It is literally the doctors job to say no.
 
Pathetic...no doctor worth their license to practice would tell a rider they are okay to ride....he heard what he wanted to hear, and not what the doctors were actually saying to him...

Good luck in his recovery...hopefully he will learn something eventually!

You mean like the doctor at the track that told him he was OK to ride? Or any of the other doctors that cleared him to ride. It only takes one doctor to stop anyone from riding on a track or competing in any sport. Yet all the doctors he saw ruled him medically fit to be on track which clearly was not the case.
 
Well, we know he does have character flaws along with his incredible ability on a motorcycle.

It does seem a little uncouth to publicly shift responsibility.........unless the doctors actually gave him clearance to ride. What was the position of HRC and Puig at that point?

These are questions we don’t know the answers to yet. MM has opened that can of worms with his statement. I expect we‘ll see defense played here shortly.

Which they did though. Remember he was evaluated by the on track medical team who cleared him to race? On top of that there were clearly mistakes made by the medical team Marquez saw to start with. One of which was allowing him to compete and/or using inferior techniques so he could return that week. If this was any other rider or athlete everyone would be laying the blame on the Drs for not correctly doing their job, which has been done many times. But because it's Marquez it must be his ego or drive to win (which is seen a a personality flaw only in him) that is solely to blame.
 
The article is on crash.net.
It will be worded for maximum controversy on that clickbait site.
I care not how he ended up riding after the injury.
I care that he heals properly and gets back on track so I can see him ride with that incredible ability.
 
The article is on crash.net.
It will be worded for maximum controversy on that clickbait site.
I care not how he ended up riding after the injury.
I care that he heals properly and gets back on track so I can see him ride with that incredible ability.
Yes that is what is important now, that he does fully heal. The posters on crashnet did not seem to be universally of that view.

Hard to hold the the doctors totally blameless when misfit on here posting from a different country predicted almost everything at every turn.
 
You mean like the doctor at the track that told him he was OK to ride? Or any of the other doctors that cleared him to ride. It only takes one doctor to stop anyone from riding on a track or competing in any sport. Yet all the doctors he saw ruled him medically fit to be on track which clearly was not the case.

The doctor at the track said he was able to ride as per the tests they perform locally, which in very few ways could possibly test the strain and stresses that a MotoGP bike would put on the body over race or even full practice …The decision would still be down to MM...he is a grown adult after all...

If MM wants to blame the doctors that up to him, but as soon as he put his leg over that bike and rode out of the garage their responsibility for his further injury was out of their hands and fully on his...
 
The doctor at the track said he was able to ride as per the tests they perform locally, which in very few ways could possibly test the strain and stresses that a MotoGP bike would put on the body over race or even full practice…The decision would still be down to MM...he is a grown adult after all...

If MM wants to blame the doctors that up to him, but as soon as he put his leg over that bike and rode out of the garage their responsibility for his further injury was out of their hands and fully on his...
That's not how it works. You're either letting your feelings towards MM cloud your judgement or your understanding of responsibility is based on some form of mental retardation. MM is responsible for his own choices of course but if he made an uninformed decision, which comments from Puig and MM himself would seem to say, then he cannot be held responsible for a decision he didn't make without all the facts.

Did the doctor in the paddock did in fact deem him fit to ride? Yes
Was MM was fit to ride? The results say otherwise
Do you think the testing was enough? Clearly the tests do nothing to prove whether someone is in a good enough condition to race motorcycles.
Could they improve the test administered to help ensure anyone who gets on a bike is in a condition to ride without unreasonable risks caused by their medical condition to themselves or others? Obviously
Could the plate have broken during testing? Unlikely but it possible could if the operation was of poor standard and/or the materials used were of poor standard.
Would the doctor who had MM (or any rider) perform tests that caused the kind of consequences be liable? Quite possibly. Legality is very murky. However administering testing that they know could have harmful consequences or even being ignorant of possible consequences would likely make that person responsible.
Can surgeons, doctors, engineers etc predict with accuracy how much force a new surgery site can withstand before structural integrity is a concern? Misfit will likely know better than me. The materials used are generally and should be designed by engineers who calculate or should calculate the forces the materials would be required to stand.
Should the doctor administering the tests to see if a rider is fit to race a motorcycle have a good understanding of a surgery that has taken place on the patient. Notes from the surgeon including the specs of all the materials used, explanation of how the surgery went, the surgeons recommendation and/or medical certificate? I'd be genuinely shocked if that isn't required as the bare minimum.
Should a doctor who is deciding whether a rider is fit or not understand how much force it would require to weaken nuts and bolts holding an arm together? Obviously

Did MM go against medical advice? Possibly, but a doctor ruled him fit to race. If his surgeon told him not to but he got a second opinion from a doctor who told him it would be fine. The first surgeon may not be responsible but the doctor who allowed it certainly is.
Did a doctor declare him unfit to ride the bike? No. Not as far as we currently know. If despite being ruled unfit to ride the bike by his surgeon/doctor but FIM allowed him to race then guess who is now responsible?
Does Marquez have years of medical training and study so that he can understand all aspects of his operation and recovery? Nope and if he saw multiple doctors who gave conflicting advice and/or direction that also absolves his responsibility.
Does the any doctor have a duty of care towards him and his colleagues about him being on track while he is unfit? Yes. Legal care of duty is generally pretty black and white, ignorance from someone who should be an expert in the field is not a defence. Forgetting about MM for a second, what if while braking into a corner his arm snapped again causing him/his bike to crash at almost full speed into another rider?
Did at least one doctor fail their own care of duty? Yes, it would seem at this stage that at least one doctor did.
The next one might be the most important one, at least legally speaking.
Could the results experienced by MM have been foreseen by medically trained professionals? Going by what misfit wrote and also the reddit that JPS (IIRC) shared then yes. That makes the doctor/s either incompetent or corrupt.
For at least these reasons the doctors involved are responsible unless Dorna/FIM has applied pressure.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but at least on the surface their appeared to be risks associated with coming back so early. Much of the talk at the time from us laymen was centred around nerves, fatigue, pain etc. Marquez believed he could withstand the pain and fatigue that would be associated with racing that weekend. Like many elite athletes MM has shown great ability to block out pain and still perform at a high-level. You won't find a sport or truly great champion that hasn't done so. You could argue that it was his ego, but the drive to compete and win is hardly the worst thing an ego has done this year in MotoGP. I have never before seen a champions will and drive to compete disparaged before. Just imagine, 'Ali was the worst, he refused to quit when he got hurt.' 'I would be a Doohan fan but he came back from that injury in 1992 because his ego wouldn't let him give up on the championship.'
 
That's not how it works. You're either letting your feelings towards MM cloud your judgement or your understanding of responsibility is based on some form of mental retardation. MM is responsible for his own choices of course but if he made an uninformed decision, which comments from Puig and MM himself would seem to say, then he cannot be held responsible for a decision he didn't make without all the facts.

Did the doctor in the paddock did in fact deem him fit to ride? Yes
Was MM was fit to ride? The results say otherwise
Do you think the testing was enough? Clearly the tests do nothing to prove whether someone is in a good enough condition to race motorcycles.
Could they improve the test administered to help ensure anyone who gets on a bike is in a condition to ride without unreasonable risks caused by their medical condition to themselves or others? Obviously
Could the plate have broken during testing? Unlikely but it possible could if the operation was of poor standard and/or the materials used were of poor standard.
Would the doctor who had MM (or any rider) perform tests that caused the kind of consequences be liable? Quite possibly. Legality is very murky. However administering testing that they know could have harmful consequences or even being ignorant of possible consequences would likely make that person responsible.
Can surgeons, doctors, engineers etc predict with accuracy how much force a new surgery site can withstand before structural integrity is a concern? Misfit will likely know better than me. The materials used are generally and should be designed by engineers who calculate or should calculate the forces the materials would be required to stand.
Should the doctor administering the tests to see if a rider is fit to race a motorcycle have a good understanding of a surgery that has taken place on the patient. Notes from the surgeon including the specs of all the materials used, explanation of how the surgery went, the surgeons recommendation and/or medical certificate? I'd be genuinely shocked if that isn't required as the bare minimum.
Should a doctor who is deciding whether a rider is fit or not understand how much force it would require to weaken nuts and bolts holding an arm together? Obviously

Did MM go against medical advice? Possibly, but a doctor ruled him fit to race. If his surgeon told him not to but he got a second opinion from a doctor who told him it would be fine. The first surgeon may not be responsible but the doctor who allowed it certainly is.
Did a doctor declare him unfit to ride the bike? No. Not as far as we currently know. If despite being ruled unfit to ride the bike by his surgeon/doctor but FIM allowed him to race then guess who is now responsible?
Does Marquez have years of medical training and study so that he can understand all aspects of his operation and recovery? Nope and if he saw multiple doctors who gave conflicting advice and/or direction that also absolves his responsibility.
Does the any doctor have a duty of care towards him and his colleagues about him being on track while he is unfit? Yes. Legal care of duty is generally pretty black and white, ignorance from someone who should be an expert in the field is not a defence. Forgetting about MM for a second, what if while braking into a corner his arm snapped again causing him/his bike to crash at almost full speed into another rider?
Did at least one doctor fail their own care of duty? Yes, it would seem at this stage that at least one doctor did.
The next one might be the most important one, at least legally speaking.
Could the results experienced by MM have been foreseen by medically trained professionals? Going by what misfit wrote and also the reddit that JPS (IIRC) shared then yes. That makes the doctor/s either incompetent or corrupt.
For at least these reasons the doctors involved are responsible unless Dorna/FIM has applied pressure.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but at least on the surface their appeared to be risks associated with coming back so early. Much of the talk at the time from us laymen was centred around nerves, fatigue, pain etc. Marquez believed he could withstand the pain and fatigue that would be associated with racing that weekend. Like many elite athletes MM has shown great ability to block out pain and still perform at a high-level. You won't find a sport or truly great champion that hasn't done so. You could argue that it was his ego, but the drive to compete and win is hardly the worst thing an ego has done this year in MotoGP. I have never before seen a champions will and drive to compete disparaged before. Just imagine, 'Ali was the worst, he refused to quit when he got hurt.' 'I would be a Doohan fan but he came back from that injury in 1992 because his ego wouldn't let him give up on the championship.'

It's actually your feelings toward MM that are clouding your judgement. Had it been any other rider, you wouldn't be trying absolve them of taking responsibility for their own actions. Marc took another big risk and this time it didn't pay off for him. He has to suffer the consequences and look to the future, hopefully he will not make the same mistake.

Had the doctors declared MM unfit, he'd still be blaming them for causing him to lose the championship. He'd claim he was fit the entire time.
 
:nonono:We don't know the facts. MM's comments are only one side of the story. His primary doctors, i.e., the ones who fixed his fracture should be his primary advisors about riding. They fixed the # and should be the judge of its integrity. The track doctors likely pass a rider as fit based on specific parameters. They were correct in that he could ride and that he did up until qualifying.

Patients often go shopping for what they want to hear and not what they need to hear. MM sustains a broken humerus. He could go shopping for the quickest route back to the track, knowing there are risks involved or instead, for the best guarantee for healing, even it means investing in a 6 week layover. We know what he and his team were shopping/looking for from their doctors. They certainly found doctors willing to go along with that as one always can. Now that the .... has hit the fan, no one wishes to take responsibility??

MM may say he has no fear, but he has a responsibility to himself. If his focus is on his championship race and not his health and recovery, then this will certainly influence his care and how he discusses his treatment/prognosis with doctors. This is his decision/attitude and it will have its consequences. Consequences he should be aware of and take responsibility for. The only difference between his decision to ride in MotoGP iwth the recognised risks is that if he falls as he did, then there's no one else to blame. However, when doctors are involved in risky decisions to return VERY early to racing post-injury, then things become muddy. Additionally, doctors are human beings too and can be influenced as MM himself was, i.e., the doctor decides to put caution aside and be aggressive with treatment in an attempt to do as MM wishes, get him back on the bike ASAP. When both parties cash in like this, the returns could be big or the losses huge, the latter of which, we are now witnessing. The doctor/s involved should take responsibility as well if they didn't clearly define the risks to MM.

It would be great to be able to accurately calculate the strength of a fixation. However, there are too many variables involved. It's even more difficult to quantify the fixation's stress tolerance. It may put up with a force 10 times, or even 50 times, but what about 150 times?? There is no guarantee, and I'd genuinely be surprised if an orthopaedic surgeon would give guarantees about the integrity of the fixation over a race weekend. Not a very sensible surgeon, if he did, but one with a LOT of hubris and to be avoided.

Finally, MM knew that he could be in serious trouble if he fell off the bike!!! With the previous arguments and this new point in mind, it could be the case that both parties very well knew that there were no guarantees. However, what they didn't properly anticipate was the real potential of a non-union if further surgery was undertaken after a plate failure. How many times have we seen riders have clavicular fractures fixed, the plate breaks after a fall and they fix it again and it's OK. This happened with Pedrosa and I think, Lorenzo.

I would like to take credit for predicting what was going to happen, but they could have gotten away with it and if they did, I would have been amazed. Who knows? Maybe he could have gotten away with it. There's no 100% failure and with a high chance of failure, I think his comeback was ill-advised, especially if the consequences come with there own set of genuine risks. However, with the probability of outcomes weighing so heavily in the direction of my prediction, well..... :blush:
 
It's actually your feelings toward MM that are clouding your judgement. Had it been any other rider, you wouldn't be trying absolve them of taking responsibility for their own actions. Marc took another big risk and this time it didn't pay off for him. He has to suffer the consequences and look to the future, hopefully he will not make the same mistake.

Had the doctors declared MM unfit, he'd still be blaming them for causing him to lose the championship. He'd claim he was fit the entire time.

It doesn’t matter which rider it was. I would have the same opinion and the same opinion of it was in a different sport. A primary function of a sports team, along with medical professionals and other relevant parties is to save athletes from themselves. Somebody hasn’t done their job, the on track doctors, the medical team that OK’d it all to happen, his own team, HRC who allowed it etc. An athletes job is to compete to the best of their ability, competing through pain or with injuries is expected. No athlete gets to the top of the mountain if their self preservation instinct isn’t lower than normal, while their ability to push through pain isn’t much higher.

Had the doctors declared him unfit, they would have made the correct decision. He would’ve likely still won the title in a cakewalk. Even if he didn’t the outcome would have been better.
 
:nonono:We don't know the facts. MM's comments are only one side of the story. His primary doctors, i.e., the ones who fixed his fracture should be his primary advisors about riding. They fixed the # and should be the judge of its integrity. The track doctors likely pass a rider as fit based on specific parameters. They were correct in that he could ride and that he did up until qualifying.

Patients often go shopping for what they want to hear and not what they need to hear. MM sustains a broken humerus. He could go shopping for the quickest route back to the track, knowing there are risks involved or instead, for the best guarantee for healing, even it means investing in a 6 week layover. We know what he and his team were shopping/looking for from their doctors. They certainly found doctors willing to go along with that as one always can. Now that the .... has hit the fan, no one wishes to take responsibility??

MM may say he has no fear, but he has a responsibility to himself. If his focus is on his championship race and not his health and recovery, then this will certainly influence his care and how he discusses his treatment/prognosis with doctors. This is his decision/attitude and it will have its consequences. Consequences he should be aware of and take responsibility for. The only difference between his decision to ride in MotoGP iwth the recognised risks is that if he falls as he did, then there's no one else to blame. However, when doctors are involved in risky decisions to return VERY early to racing post-injury, then things become muddy. Additionally, doctors are human beings too and can be influenced as MM himself was, i.e., the doctor decides to put caution aside and be aggressive with treatment in an attempt to do as MM wishes, get him back on the bike ASAP. When both parties cash in like this, the returns could be big or the losses huge, the latter of which, we are now witnessing. The doctor/s involved should take responsibility as well if they didn't clearly define the risks to MM.

It would be great to be able to accurately calculate the strength of a fixation. However, there are too many variables involved. It's even more difficult to quantify the fixation's stress tolerance. It may put up with a force 10 times, or even 50 times, but what about 150 times?? There is no guarantee, and I'd genuinely be surprised if an orthopaedic surgeon would give guarantees about the integrity of the fixation over a race weekend. Not a very sensible surgeon, if he did, but one with a LOT of hubris and to be avoided.

Finally, MM knew that he could be in serious trouble if he fell off the bike!!! With the previous arguments and this new point in mind, it could be the case that both parties very well knew that there were no guarantees. However, what they didn't properly anticipate was the real potential of a non-union if further surgery was undertaken after a plate failure. How many times have we seen riders have clavicular fractures fixed, the plate breaks after a fall and they fix it again and it's OK. This happened with Pedrosa and I think, Lorenzo.

I would like to take credit for predicting what was going to happen, but they could have gotten away with it and if they did, I would have been amazed. Who knows? Maybe he could have gotten away with it. There's no 100% failure and with a high chance of failure, I think his comeback was ill-advised, especially if the consequences come with there own set of genuine risks. However, with the probability of outcomes weighing so heavily in the direction of my prediction, well..... :blush:

Anyone as good as him at a sport like motor bike racing is totally driven, perhaps beyond the bounds of what is considered conventionally rational. Imo Birdman is right as he often is about bike racing, and the successive title win thing was likely on his mind.

It seems he didn’t have the right operation initially, but as you say he probably sought the operation that would allow him the earliest return and a surgeon who would perform that operation. And if he is being quoted correctly his gripe is that doctors failed to convince him not to ride, so it sounds like he was warned of consequences but decided to take the risk which is at least partly on him. It certainly doesn’t sound like he was talked into riding by others, and he and his team have historically pretty much always gone their own way. As we both have said, he was also probably looking at the history of Edwards and Lorenzo riding with recently plated clavicular fractures and likely considered the issue to be one of tolerating pain rather than one of having a functional arm long term. Lorenzo finished 4th or 5th after circulating higher riding 2 days after his fracture, then re-fractured it and bent the plate in a crash in practice for the next race in the rain causing him to miss the next 2 or 3 races which cost him the 2013 title and made him (imo) forever wary in the rain thereafter, but didn't have any sequelae in regard to the clavicle afaik.

I have thought the same as you in regard to him being passed fit to ride, he wasn’t concussed and his arm was functional before the plate moved, close to inevitable though that may have been which you actually said at the time, and these guys ride with injuries which in a general context would be considered quite significant all the time. As an aside whether doctors employed by sporting organisations or teams serve the sportsman primarily is a philosophical question which has long vexed me however.

He fully deserved criticism when he was younger, the Willairot incident remains completely indefensible, but imo he hasn’t ridden in a fashion careless about the safety of others for years now, and I think the current character assassination is over the top, sure his judgement about his own safety/health comes into question, but as Birdman and p4p1 have said if you don’t like his mentality as a rider then you don’t like Mick Doohan and most of the other greats probably including Valentino Rossi.

What I do find interesting is that those vilifying him on Crashnet currently, some of them seemingly even taking some joy in his misfortune, were quite likely members of the same band which vilified Casey Stoner for seeking his own medical advice/finding his own doctors rather than going with the Ducati etc doctors when he was ill in 2009 and considered himself that he was unfit to ride, made psychological/psychiatric diagnoses on him, and called him a quitter when he eventually made what gave every appearance to me of being a fairly rational decision to retire.
 
Last edited:
It doesn’t matter which rider it was. I would have the same opinion and the same opinion of it was in a different sport. A primary function of a sports team, along with medical professionals and other relevant parties is to save athletes from themselves. Somebody hasn’t done their job, the on track doctors, the medical team that OK’d it all to happen, his own team, HRC who allowed it etc. An athletes job is to compete to the best of their ability, competing through pain or with injuries is expected. No athlete gets to the top of the mountain if their self preservation instinct isn’t lower than normal, while their ability to push through pain isn’t much higher.

Had the doctors declared him unfit, they would have made the correct decision. He would’ve likely still won the title in a cakewalk. Even if he didn’t the outcome would have been better.

As misfit says we don’t know what he was told, but what he seems to be saying is that the risks were not emphasised sufficiently. We do know that non-union was foreseeable because misfit foresaw same
 

Recent Discussions

Recent Discussions

Back
Top