Ken Roczen admits he is frustrated that he can’t ride during the week and is surviving the main events, unable to show his true potential down the stretch after such a great season until his practice crash a couple of weeks ago, that left him with an injured ankle and a torn ligament in his shoulder.
Roczen revealed:
“I haven’t ridden at all until this Thursday, I did a little twenty-minute, kind of like a fun session just to get a little time on the bike. I’m doing some therapy, and I am cycling a lot. I love running, but I’m not running just because of the ankle, I don’t want to aggravate it anymore. The most frustrating thing is that it feels fine when walking or cycling, you wouldn’t think it’s a big deal. On the gym side of things, I haven’t been able to do that much just because of the shoulder, I just have to lay off things. It is the way it is right now, so I’m playing with the kids and cycling and trying to keep my head high. It is tough because I feel useless during the week. We got four races to go so we have to just keep doing our thing.”
That said, Roczen still managed to lead for half the race, underlining his natural talented, before Sexton and then Webb came charging through. Roczen said in the press conference:
“While I was leading there, I didn’t care about anything, I was just riding. This track was a big problem for me because it had five right hand turns and two left hand turns, and it is my right ankle,” he admitted. “I think if the track was a little more in my favor, as in not so many right-hand turns, I could rely a little more on my left leg and push it more.
“Right now, I’m just waiting until I am straight and then I’m getting on the throttle because I just cannot afford that quick dab down with my foot. This sucks. I’m most miserable in practice because you feel like you have no adrenaline and nothing going on. When the races come, I’m usually always fine to go out and send it a little bit. But in practice I’m fricken miserable. I don’t even want to do it.”
