Márquez: "The last laps at Mugello confirmed that surgery is the right thing to do"

May 30, 2022

This Saturday, after the timed session in Mugello and in a press conference hastily organized by Honda, the Spaniard made it official that, after the Italian Grand Prix, he would travel to the United States to undergo surgery again, a circumstance that will lead him to be off for an indefinite period.

On Sunday, Marc Márquez crossed the finish line in tenth place, just under 12 seconds behind Pecco Bagnaia, the winner, and with the feeling of having done the job that he had demanded of himself. The phone call from Dr. Joaquín Sánchez Sotelo , who operated on him at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester , Minnesota, came on Friday, between the first free trial session and the second. Had he received it on Thursday, before getting on the bike, the Catalan would not have raced in Italy. But the boy from Cervera (Lleida) did not want to leave the weekend unfinished, even though Honda gave him complete freedom to pack his bags and go home. He decided to finish the test, although, obviously, he did it without taking more risks than strictly necessary, to avoid complicating things even more.

Márquez, who was the second Honda rider to cross the finish line –Takaaki Nakagami finished eighth–, later insisted on the limitations that these arm rotation problems have caused him since he returned from his first long-term absence, nine months , at the beginning of last year. Some problems that, in Mugello, increased a little more, due to the physical demands of the track.

Márquez was not among the top positions at any time during the weekend. If he managed to get into the second screen of qualifying (Q2), on Saturday, it was because in the first he took advantage of Jack Miller’s wheel, whom he precisely left out.

On Sunday he started the eleventh, benefiting from the three-position penalty imposed on Jorge, and finished one place ahead, after having a scare that made him lower his spirits a bit, and find a rhythm in which he felt comfortable. Despite not going to all of them, the #93 later said that this result would not have changed so much if he had not known that Italy was going to be his last race this year.

“Without knowing that I was going to have surgery, I wouldn’t have finished much higher. At best, ninth or eighth. The last few laps confirmed that, indeed, the operation is the right decision,” said Márquez.

On Thursday, in the operating room, Dr. Sánchez Sotelo ‘s medical team will reopen his arm and will have to break that humerus that has caused so many nightmares in the last two years. That would make anyone uneasy. “It always scares you to operate again on the same arm. But when they called me and gave me all the results, I breathed. Friday was one of the best days of my life,” added Márquez, who if all goes well will return to Spain on next Sunday, to start a recovery period whose duration will be determined by the sensations: “When I asked the doctors when I could run again, they told me that with that mentality I would not have surgery, that I should stay at home”.