In the next issue of OTOR we will look at the top five questions that revolve around MXGP this year, and with just three days between issue #124 appearing on line on February 23rd and the first Grand Prix of the season in Qatar there should be relatively little chance of the article losing any relevance due to a mishap.

We cannot say the same of any stories at the moment however.

Riders are currently using the Italian Championship and Internationals in UK and France as final testing sessions with a view to Qatar, vaguely similar to the way MotoGP is clocking miles in Malaysia and then Australia next month. We’ve already had eyebrow raisers. We were allowed some insight to the training and winter preparation of Evgeny Bobryshev and Shaun Simpson and this means that their speed both in southern and northern Europe is no great surprise but we hardly expected the injury scoop to have collected the two men who have won the MXGP world championship for the last seven years.

As a football player will want to get all of his mishit goal attempts out of the way in the pre-match warm-up, perhaps Tony Cairoli and Romain Febvre will be hoping that any injury hoodoo has come and gone with their respective rib and cut arm aliments and Qatar almost in sight. The fact that both expect to be fully fit – if a little concerned at the disruption to a programme that is careful planned and involves a vast degree of commitment – for Losail is some compensation. Grand Prix fans could be feeling the same way as I do and long for remaining pre-season fixtures in Valence, Ottobiano and LaCapelle go-off without a hitch so the gate is as full as it can be for the desert-based opener.

The events of the elongated MXGP seasons of the last half a decade (the last time we had ‘just’ fifteen Grands Prix was 2011) have taught us that it is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ a rider will have to deal with pain, look at x-rays and seek medical advice. There can be high-profile cases such as Jeffrey Herlings’ astonishing double loss of sure-fire MX2 title success or quiet, nagging afflictions such as the knee problem that blunted Gautier Paulin’s charge last year. There is an inevitability at hand, which means we won’t always get the frantic and exciting battles on the track that we continually crave as each rider’s individual season and story goes through its peaks and troughs.

To read the rest of the Blog in the current issue of OTOR click HERE

Photo by Ray Archer