Jorge Lorenzo completes successful collarbone surgery

Jorge Lorenzo has undergone successful surgery to plate and screw the left collarbone he broke in a high-speed crash during a rain-hit second MotoGP practice session at Assen in Holland yesterday.

The reigning world champion flew home to Barcelona last night and immediately underwent a two-hour operation at the Hospital General de Catalunya to insert a titanium plate and eight screws to secure the displaced fracture.

He was operated on by Dr. Joaquin Rodriguez, assisted by Dr. Ana Carreras, Dr. Marcos Cots and Dr. Michele Zasa of the Clinica Mobile.

Dr. Zasa said: “The duration of the surgery was approximately two hours; the clinical course of post-operative has been regular. Jorge sustained a displaced, complex fracture to the third medial of the left collarbone. It’s been a challenging operation, apparently successful.

We inserted a titanium plate and eight screws to secure the fragments of the collarbone. Jorge has just woken up from the anaesthesia. In the next few hours we will evaluate the progress of the patient and then we will be able to estimate how long the post-surgery rehabilitation will take.”

Lorenzo’s factory Yamaha team boss Wilco Zeelenberg said the surgery took place between 2 and 4am European time this morning, with the 26-year-old desperate to give himself the maximum time available to recover ahead of a return at the Sachsenring in Germany a fortnight today.

Zeelenberg said: “Following the medical check at the Circuit’s Medical Centre first and at the Assen Hospital later, yesterday Jorge decided to be operated as soon as possible. Unfortunately no operation room was available in Assen due to some other very urgent life threatening operations that had much higher priority than Jorge’s collarbone and therefore we flew to Barcelona, where a surgery room was made available at the Hospital General de Catalunya.

The surgery, that started at 2.00am and finished at 4.00am has had good results and now Jorge is sleeping, exhausted from such a long and tough day. We have to wait till he wakes up before making any further evaluation of Jorge’s physical conditions and how long his recovery will take”.

Lorenzo’s collarbone break has dealt a blow to his hopes of retaining the MotoGP world title this year.

He was in red-hot form arriving in Assen after storming to victories in Mugello and Catalunya and he trailed series leader Dani Pedrosa by only seven-points.

The double MotoGP champion though took the blame for his FP2 crash which occurred at the fast Hoge Heide corner at in excess of 140mph.

He said: “I think I was too confident, at the moment of the crash I was very fast and felt very strong, but maybe the conditions weren’t the perfect ones to have this high confidence. I entered the corner faster than the previous lap and I think touched a patch of water, or maybe aquaplaned which made the rear wheel light and touch onto the white line, making it a lot worse which is why I crashed.

I flew and when I hit the ground I broke my collarbone. I don’t have anything negative with this circuit, just bad luck or in this case, too much confidence. You must always be optimistic, things could be worse and I will try to recover as soon as possible.”