On March 31st, Team HRC’s Mitch Evans had surgery on his right-shoulder back in Brisbane, Australia where the Honda rider is now recuperating. The initial prognosis from the doctors was good and the belief was that he would make a full and quick recovery. Honda Pro Racing caught up with the youngster, who placed third in his first ever MXGP race, just to see how things were progressing…
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You had the surgery last week, what’s the situation right now with the shoulder and how are you coping with it all?
I’ve basically now just got to let the shoulder recover and let the cartilage glue back to the bone. I have these little exercises that the physio has given me, after seeing him in the studio yesterday for my one week check-up. He was really happy with my range of motion and I have double the range that anyone normally would one week after surgery so that’s a really positive sign. He gave me these exercises to do so I’ve been following that advice. I’m not in any pain so honestly, it doesn’t even feel like I’ve had surgery at all. I’ve also been keeping in contact with Team HRC’s physio Filippo and he’s really happy with the progress too so it’s all looking positive. I’m keeping it rested it, but doing these four different exercises four times a day and that’s the only time that I’m moving it. They are pretty basic range of motion exercises and then nothing else.
What about the rest of your body, are you able to train and keep fit still?
I’m still able to cycle, but I’m not able to go running or anything like that. I’m allowed to do cycling and weights on any other part of my body just as long as am I’m not using my shoulder, so I started indoor cycling two days ago now and just slowly build back into it as I haven’t really done much since I dislocated shoulder. I just want to keep my base fitness and then once my shoulder starts feeling a lot better, I want to add some higher intensity workouts to try and replicate the bike time that I’m missing. At the moment its low intensity stuff, just to get the body moving again.
In terms of the schedule, are you working on the shoulder schedule or are you looking at the MXGP schedule and trying to recover for that?
For me, I’m just focusing on my shoulder and just by the timeline that my doctors and physio have laid out for me. I’m not really worrying about the MXGP calendar right now, so it makes sense just to control what I can control. I hope though that by the time we do get back to racing, I’ll have spent time back on the bike already.
Is there a plan to come back from Australia or is it still up in the air?
I don’t think anyone really has an idea at the minute, so we’re just playing it day by day and seeing what the governments are saying. It’s going to come down to when we’re allowed out of the country, or even when I’m allowed back into other countries without any quarantine periods.
You’re at home most of the time now, have you found anything else to pass the time?
We’ve been doing jigsaw puzzles recently at home, 1000-piece puzzles and they take a good amount of time. We’re onto our second one now so just trying to keep off the boredom that way. It’s like being a little kid again, playing board games at home and sitting around and not doing too much. It’s a difficult situation but I’m also looking at doing some studying at home, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m thinking of doing something like science and nutrition, something along those lines, which could help me with my career at the moment and also gets me ahead for after my racing career.
Any last words for your fans out there?
I think it is just important for everyone to follow their government’s guidelines during this difficult period. Obviously it’s easy for me to say this right now, but the FIM message of #RidersAtHome is an important one to follow because this time will come to an end, and then once it’s over, we can ride again without any problems. It’s important that people stay safe and just reduce unnecessary risk and personally, it’ll make the return to racing even sweeter when we get to do it.
Author – Honda Pro Racing
Image Credit – @ShotbyBavo
