Joel Smets was on the MXGP studio show with Lisa Leyland and Paul Malin in Finland, and the KTM team manager gave an update on Jeffrey Herlings and explained why he was not having surgery and when he might be back at the races.
On the reason behind Herlings not having surgery:
“We will monitor on a daily basis. As you probably all know, at the end, he didn’t have surgery at the beginning. And the reason is quite simple. At the beginning, the piece of bone had changed position, let’s say, a little piece of bone that was broken off. He has a plate on the collarbone. If they had to repair it, they had to take that plate off and put another, was a little bit of a difficult, was going to be a difficult surgery. But luckily, actually, the day after when he was meant to go for the surgery, the piece of bone had gone into place again. So there was quite a lot of contact on that little piece of bone with the rest of the collarbone. So then a few surgeons looked at it and they said like, okay, this is going to heal quicker than when we do the surgery. So that’s actually the actual situation. So, but now, yeah, we have to see how usually, okay, we all know that Jeffrey breaks something rather quickly, let’s say, but he always healed quite quick. So we all take it day after day.
On the disappointment of another injury for Jeffrey and the team, Joel said: “From heaven to hell. Because we were all actually waiting for his return. And to be honest, actually, I personally, myself, I was believing and hoping that he could maybe even make bigger steps, but maybe he played it smart, let’s say. So at the end, well, he did quite good with taking his time to come back and gain confidence and stuff. And, exactly in order to try to avoid all our injuries, let’s say. So we can only say, I have to say he did it the smart way. And we were of course happy that he was, we were in the winners circle again. So you can imagine, okay, the day it happened, I was there and, and you kind of feel like, been there, done that, but it doesn’t make it easier. It’s like, yeah, you feel really disappointed, you feel sad.”
So, could Herlings be back for Lommel? “I don’t want to predict anything. Of course, for us as a team, it would be nice. We all remember Jeffrey’s race last year in Lommel and then we’ve seen him right in the sand many times in the past. So I think for the motocross community in general, and specifically for us as a team, yeah, it would be really cool to have him in Lommel, but you can’t force these things.“
