MotoGP: The MotoGP World Cup, Marc Mrquez's sore shoulder earring

It took place in November, the rehabilitation was complicated in December and is still painful two weeks after the start of the championship in Qatar.

• Pre-season
  

  Honda admits its problems: “We don't know the solution”
  

On November 25, a few hours after leaving for the beaches of a warm country, in the last tests of 2019, Marc Mrquez I suffered a violent one every time on curve 13 of the Jerez circuit and had to run to the consultation of his trusted doctor, Xavier Mir, to confirm what the pain already told him: his healthy shoulder, the right one, had ceased to be. A year after surgery on his left shoulder, the trauma specialist invited him to return to the operating room on a preventive basis, to avoid a season of pain, and, for the second consecutive winter, his vacation plans were nowhere.

With the suitcase full of batters and shorts, he suddenly discovered himself in the Andalusian circuit in a meeting with his people and the people in charge of Honda to assess his options. Together they grouped the pros and cons of the intervention, but in the end the conclave met in a question that launched Alberto Puig: Marc, are you willing to spend another winter in the gym? The answer could only be affirmative. And that's how it all began.

From the intervention on November 27 at the Dexeus-Quirn University Hospital in Barcelona, ​​Mrquez spent almost four hours a day with Carlos J. Garca, your physiotherapist -in 10 weeks, 92 sessions and 250 hours of rehabilitation-, and at the beginning everything goes as it should. In the first few days, about a year before, they focused on recovering the complete mobility of the shoulder and, later, they dedicated themselves to returning the tone to the muscles of the area. Then something failed.

“Don't even take a glass of water”

We saw that in one of the most important muscles, the deltoid, a nerve was like something damaged. It is something that can happen in an operation, it is not a mistake, but we had to start working very hard with other muscles to compensate for it, summarizes Mrquez, who in January, on Garca's stretcher, understood that the path to his seventh title of MotoGP will be more meandering than expected.

At the beginning of January, as you confess, do not prune or drink a glass of water. At the end of that month, in Malaysian training, I suffered the unspeakable. And already in February, these last three days, in the Qatar tests, it has still been painful. On the first day, in fact, he needed to get off the bike because of the pain, on the second day he suffered one every time and, in the time classification, he ended up far from his main rivals, Fabio Quartararo, Maverick Vials Y lex Rins.

The close of the first World Cup race, next March 8 also in Qatar, does not favor him, and the introduction of the new Thai Grand Prix before the American tour, where he always picks up, delves into his problems. I'm worried about the shoulder, of course, but not only because of that. I am worried because I do not see myself to finish in the top five in the first race of Qatar, because we are not fast in all the circuits, commented the pilot himself in reference to his Honda.

Opposite sensations in Honda

In Mrquez's team, while ruling out the possibility of a second pilot operation, the nerves were noticeable. A year earlier, the preseason served to demonstrate from the beginning that they had the fastest motorcycle in the championship and this course the sensations are completely opposite. Suzuki and Yamaha have confirmed their evolution, Ducati has presented his inventions and Honda seems to have been left behind.

Beyond the results of a stubborn Marc, his brother lex He has also remained in the last places of the classification and the two pilots of satellite teams, Lime crutchlow Y Taakaki Nakagami, more of the same. The joy of the title in 2019 and the historic renovation of Marc Mrquez until 2024 has not lasted long. Before the serious starts, his dominance of the World Cup is already in doubt.