A big myth about Jeffrey Herlings is that he crashes a lot, with many thinking that’s why he gets hurt so often. But the reality is different, a lot of injuries, yes, but the big crashes aren’t as common as you would think.
In fact, two of Herlings biggest injuries came without even crashing, including the one that changed his career at the start of 2019 when he was at the absolute peak of his career.
Herlings told us: “Yeah, I rarely, I need to knock now on this thing, (KTM truck) because I rarely crash, but when I do, I always get hurt for some reason. And yeah, my foot was caught between a bank (coming into the 2019 season), my knee just yeah, even without crashing when it happened, (Monticelli) also jumped on my back, didn’t crash, (broke his shoulder blade) I had plenty of injuries just without crashing, so yeah I think I’m built quite fragile, like a piece of glass!“
Herlings was the first in a run of three of the highest profile riders in the sport to suffer a bad injury without even crashing in the last six months, Herlings did his at the last Dutch race of the year, just one week after the MXoN and he explained how it happened, telling us:
“It happened with one lap to go, and I just land and my feet came on the foot peg and just twitched in the dirt, and I would have done that like probably a thousand times in my life and never there was anything, I just felt like a massive pop and I was like damn, I just messed up my knee, but then I just did, I was one more lap to go so I just finished the lap, I won the moto obviously with Kay, and yeah, straight I felt it wasn’t right, and my knee wasn’t so swollen, and yeah it was really weird because didn’t crash, just my feet came off on the landing and that’s it.“
With Jett Lawrence then putting his foot on the ground and not crashing early in the supercross season leading to the same injury! Then, of course, Eli Tomac, broke his leg after it folded under his bike out of a corner.
A trifecta of injuries to three of the greatest without crashing – this sport is something else.
Full interview below:
