Following his surgery at the Mayo Clinic earlier this year, Marc Márquez (Honda) has undergone post-surgery evaluations. The most recent of these was earlier today. The results were quite positive, according to Repsol Honda in the press release below.
Marquez is expected to begin training on motorcycles, and perhaps get back on his MotoGP machine as early as the tests following the Misano round. This test is scheduled to take place early next month.
Here is the press release from Repsol Honda:
Following his latest medical check, Marc Marquez has been given the green light to intensify his training and assess the condition of his arm on a motorcycle.
Marc Marquez has completed another successful medical check at the Ruber Internacional Hospital in Madrid. His trusted medical team, consisting of Dr. Joaquin Sánchez Sotelo, Dr. Samuel Antuña and Dr. Angel Cotorro were all pleased with the healing and recovery of the right humerus.
The medical team have given Marquez approval to intensify his training, adding more weight and introducing more varied exercises into his routine. Alongside this, it has also been agreed for the eight-time World Champion to start training on motorcycles to understand the condition of his right arm with further context.
From the findings of this outing, Marquez and the Repsol Honda Team will assess the following steps needed.
Dr. Sanchez Sotelo
MD PhD, Chair of the Division of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, Mayo Clinic.
“Today, I had the opportunity to evaluate Marc Marquez in regard to his surgical procedure recently performed at Mayo Clinic. Fortunately, Marc Marquez has regained a great arc of motion and has recovered well from a muscular perspective as well. Today, he underwent radiographs and a CT scan that show complete bone union.”
Although it scarcely seems possible, 2023 will likely be an even bigger nightmare than 2022 has been for Joan Mir.
#36’s phone, blowing up with texts from a certain Pol Espargaro…
“Don’t do it!”
“Seriously, bro, stay where you are. You don’t want any part of this.”
“Quickest way to start hating riding a motorcycle? Be Marc’s teammate at Repsol Honda.”
“Even your hospitality girls are way hotter than ours. Man, I miss those Rizla Suzuki girls.”
“Money isn’t everything. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I have two words or you: Alberto. Puig.”
Haha! Honestly, I am sure Mir thinks he is better than Marquez, just like Pol and Lorenzo believed they were.
The journalists still talk Mir up quite a bit. I’m still not convinced he is at the same level as the top guys on the grid. I think Honda is going to make some radical changes to their approach though, so perhaps this will be an opportunity to shine. He’ll be developing a bike alongside a reemerging Marc Marquez. If his talented but healing teammate makes him look like a distant second fiddle from the get go, he’s going to have a long two years.
Mir won his 2020 MotoGP title despite earning no pole positions or fastest laps, and winning only one race, very late in the year. 2020 saw an abbreviated schedule consisting solely of a small handful of European tracks, with no spectators, and the defending champion, Marc Marquez, was sidelined nearly the entire season.
Mir still has only one race victory in his entire MotoGP career. Zero poles. Only one fastest lap. Only one front-row start. In Moto2 he also garnered zero victories, zero poles, and only one fastest lap. Thirteen MotoGP podiums, four in Moto2.
Yes, he earned his crown in 2020. The points system is what it is. That being said, he was easily the least impressive champion we’ve even seen in the MotoGP era. He did nothing in 2019, and basically nothing since that bizarre, Covid-ruined 2020 season. His teammate routinely out-qualifies him, sets faster laps during the race, and is simply faster all weekend long, at least until he ends up tumbling through the gravel.
In addition to Rins, guys like Binder, Oliveira, Morbidelli, Martin, Bastianini, and, obviously, Fabio, have all compiled more fastest laps, poles, and victories than Mir has over these past three seasons, or the past four seasons, if you include his one year in Moto2. Zarco has yet to win a race in MotoGP, but he’s done everything else, in abundance. Plenty of poles, front-row starts, and fastest laps, and he absolutely dominated Moto2 for a couple of seasons, racking up huge numbers of victories, poles, front-row starts, and fastest laps to backstop his two world titles.
Bottom line, Mir simply isn’t that fast. He’s not even the fastest guy on his own Suzuki team. Put him in the Repsol Honda garage across from a reasonably healthy #93, he’s going to get absolutely buried. We’re talking a Pol Espargaro-level of buried.
Fun fact: Despite missing nearly the entire season again, and despite being severely busted up even when he did contest those few races, Marc Marquez is still the leading points man for Honda in 2022. Hell, not only is he leading, he has more points than the other three Honda riders combined.
Yeah, good luck there, Joan.
The points system is what it is and every other rider you listed would trade their entire career’s achievements to be the “least impressive champion in the MotoGP era”. He has (had..) what none of the others have enough of – consistency. I don’t think he’s the very fastest guy either but when he and his bike are good, he averages much higher than most.
With the rules having repaired this sport so that good teams and riders have a chance to win, we’ve seen a several guys win multiple races and not a championship.
If Honda keeps making the bike they do then it doesn’t matter who Marquez’ stable mate is. They’ll lose on it.
I know no one here will want to hear it, but I’m not sure Marc has learned the lesson that put him in this position in the first place. Shortly before his first arm-break crash, he could have settled for 3rd, or had some patience and passed later where he probably would have come second. But he was gonna prove was a “warrior”, where his place is always on the top step.
If he had “settled” that day, he probably would have missed the tribulations of the last couple years, at least in regards to his broken humorous.
We shall see whether Marc has learned to realize in the moment, when he is NOT the fastest rider out there.
Somedays you get the bear, other days the bear gets you. Avoiding the latter is as important as striving for the former.
Good luck, Marc. I hope he makes a full and speedy recovery, and that he gets his old speed back. The sport misses him.
The sport may miss him, but nobody on track wants him there. Dude is a liability.
It will be good to see him back. Great talent (obviously), and he seems to be the only one able to tame the Honda. I wonder if his head will let him. He seemed to find the limit in practice and qualifying by throwing it down a couple times. I hope he comes back, his eyes hold up, he can find the limit an easier way.
Looking forward to the multi-time MotoGP champ Mark Marquez’s return to racing, can’t wait!
I’m with you on the DB!
Hopefully seeing as he waited for the bone to actually fuse he’ll take this at an appropriate pace to fully recover. I have to agree with Mickey that it is difficult to imagine the pre-injury Marquez returning next year, maybe even ever, given how much time he has spent off the bike in recent years. That said, even a diminished Marquez can be a threat.
Yeah, it’s not just the time off the bike, it’s the change in invincibility that such injuries/ordeals instill in one.
“We’re only immortal for a limited time” – NEP
I don’t like Marquez at all, but I fully respect him as a motorcycle talent, so I don’t discard him as a candidate when fully fit.
Marc fucked around and found out. That’s what happens when you ride dangerously and flaunt the rules of the sport. I wish him luck in his future (car) racing endeavors.
marquez will always have his talent. where he will struggle is to regain his fitness. he might still weigh the same as he did three years ago, but his cardio/muscle memory/vo2max are gone. and honda is/are gonna crush his 2020 bike. fabio and bagnia are not worried.
There’s no reason to think his athletic capacities will be diminished from his accident any more than they would be from simple aging and he’s not “old” by athletic standards. If his arm is right again, I expect the old Marc to return.
I think his physical and athletic recovery will be very near 100% of his pre-crash condition given enough time, and his raw talent won’t be dimmed much if any by age. He just needs time on the bike to sharpen those skills. The question mark I think is where he will be mentally. In the past he’s pulled off some remarkable feats because he had the confidence to do so and has never had to pay such a high penalty for failure before. It will be interesting to see if he’ll still take those risks that have kept him at a higher level than his competition over the years given what’s happened and the remaining fact that a good whack on the head has him seeing double for weeks/months at a time.
I think he’s already shown that he’s mentally undamaged. In the 2021 season I read that he was the #3 most frequent crasher (arm damage and all..), despite not starting all of the races. That indicates to me that he hasn’t really acquired any fear of risk and he’ll still go for it, especially now that his body is (presumably) restored.
It will be interesting to see. I saw in an interview where Marc said that as soon as he’s 70% – 80% where he needs to be fitness wise, he wants to be racing again because that is the only way to truly condition the body and mind to get to 100%. He is probably sandbagging a bit – I imagine he will be running more like 90% to 95% when he lines back up on the grid – but I’m not expecting fireworks right away. Especially given the sad state of Honda’s MotoGP project. They have more work to do than Marquez does.
I’m not sure Marc will be a front runner when he comes back…not because of his ability more because Honda is far off the pace of the rest of the field…it would be interesting to see him on a Ducati
Marc who? Rides for what? Do they still make motorcycles?
Looking forward to a Fabio vs Marquez showdown.. Marquez is still the top Honda rider which is remarcable, and could break the top 10 with a return. He is no Rossi bit is still the biggest name in the sport.
“Merde…”, Fabio Quatararo
Lol
😂
Definitely the best comment on this thread!!🤣🤣
Good luck to Marc. I hope he takes his time training and fully recovering. No sense in trying to return to racing this season.
Im afraid when he does return, he will not be his pre-injury self, and you’d have to expect that. He will also find the competition stiffer than ever.