Austin Forkner has given a raw, emotional and open update on the devastating crash at Arlington.
“Seven/Eight minutes in my left contact lense fell out…it does throw your depth perception off. Your blurry eye takes control over your good eye. Is that why I crashed? I don’t know.”
“Onto the crash, I came up about 2 inches short, whenever all my weight went forward, I have my bad arm that I had all those nerve surgeries on and it’s weak and I lost all that muscle, which is the arm that blew off and it was game over after that.”
“I broke my L3 and L4 on my right side, I broke my scapula all the way across the top into my shoulder socket. I had bleeding in my lungs, still coughing up some blood this morning
“They said I was out for 3-5 minutes, I was knocked out for a long time. Those are the injuries I know of right know. I’m going to gey some more MRIs on my shoulder. I may even need another look at my back.”
An emotional Forkner then fought back tears saying: “I know I am really lucky and really blessed to come away from that like I did. I watched the crash and jusy broken down and cried because of how bad it could have been.
“I had people texting me ‘are you okay,’ ‘ are you alive,’ ‘can you walk?’ That was probably one of the scariest crashes I have ever had. I am really fortunate and blessed that this is all that did. That I can feel anything below the next or that I am alive in general I am very fortunate and very blessed.”
But that one scared me. That scared me a lot after watching it back. It’s so early but I don’t know what this means for me or my future. Sometimes I always talk to God and ask for signs and ask him to show me this and show me that and maybe this is just another milestone, another thing for me to overcome, it’s just going to add to my story. But at some point you gotta start thinking that maybe he’s trying to show me something. My thought process is I want to be grateful of only having these injuries. And if I jump straight back onto a bike and onto a supercross track, did I get his message, did I get what he was trying to show me? I don’t know…”
Hear from an understanably downbeat Austin Forkner after his horrific crash in Arlington just when it finally looked like there was light at the end of an injury tunnel.
Carmichael and Villopoto talk about how the crash could have been prevented:
