Hopkins out for rest of season
Added on Friday, September 11th, 2009 by Carole Nash Editor
Hopkins out for rest of season
John Hopkins is expected to miss the rest of the World Superbike Championship season after doctors discovered some minor bruising on the rear of his brain.
The Stiggy Honda rider, who has had a nightmare 2009 after due to injury and the collapse of the Kawasaki MotoGP team, was run-over after being caught up in a multi-bike crash at the Nurburgring on Sunday.
Doctors operated on the brain yesterday but Hopkins told Roadracingworld.com that he is likely to be out of action for the remainder of the season as medical teams plan to monitor the injury over the next six to eight weeks.
The injury is just the latest in a nightmare year for the American rider, who was left without a ride at the start of the season following Kawasaki’s decision to withdraw from the MotoGP championship in January. The 26-year-old was thrown a lifeline by Stiggy Honda to compete in the World Superbike Championship, and joined up with the team at Valencia in round three.
But since then however, it has been a story of injuries and race retirements for Hopkins, having missed five rounds of the season between Assen and Misano and finished only three races so far this season.
Speaking on Hopkins’ personal website, his wife Ashleigh said: “This morning we had an appointment with a neurologist as Dr Ting found something unusual going on in John’s brain and wanted a specialist to take a look before they even thought about performing surgery, and of course to check there is no serious damage to the brain.
“Everything went OK, there is a small bruise to the back of the brain that was bleeding but not anymore. They have rescheduled John to come back in 6 weeks to re check and see if there is any change in size.
“Once he gave the all clear on going under for surgery, Tings assistant Tuan “ made it happen” and rescheduled a surgery so that they could sort John out that day.
“Surgery took place around 5pm and didn’t wrap up till around 7.30-8pm.
“I waited in the recovery room till he eventually came around. He is so funny to be around when he does, complete joker! The nurses love him and kept repeating himself like 5x over ;)
“We got back to the hotel around 9.45 and just made sure that John took it easy from now on.”
