Stoner seeks surgery to “save career”
Added on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
Stoner seeks surgery to “save career”
Casey Stoner believes that surgery is the only way to save his career as an unhealed hand injury continues to hamper his performance.
The Australian, who last week lost his world championship crown to Valentino Rossi, has complained of fatigue in recent rounds as the scaphoid injury sustained in 2003 has flared up once again.
The injury hasn’t been helped by a series of crashes for the 22-year-old, not least the ones in Brno and Misano which ultimately ended his title hopes.
“I have to have an operation; if I don’t it could be my career over,” said Stoner, ahead of his home Grand Prix at Phillip Island this weekend.
“It’s disappointing, five years on, it starts to flare up, but it’s better to get it fixed at the end of the season.”
The comments mark a stark contrast from 12 months ago for Stoner, who claimed his first world championship last year’s Australian Grand Prix, as he looks to secure second place this time around.
“I’m a little bit worried about this weekend, to see how many laps I can do in the race before I start getting tired,” Stoner admitted.”Pain-wise it’s fine, it’s just a weakness in change of direction and things like that.
“In some ways we’re lucky it did show us what the real problem was, so we weren’t just ignoring it and finding a bigger problem later on.”
Stoner, who has mooted a possible early finish to the season, does however believe that he will not miss out on pre-season testing completely, adding; “It’ll take about three months to come good, but we should have that amount of time before testing starts next year and then we should be a little bit more competitive.”
