Casey Stoner was scheduled to be racing this weekend at the Brno GP following his stoic 4th place at Indianapolis, after suffering significant ligament damage and small fractures to his right ankle during a massive highside in qualifying.
After reviewing his MRI scans, his doctors in Australia have advised the reigning World champion that he needs to undergo surgery to repair the injury and will now be forced to skip the Czech Grand Prix.
Stoner is currently 3rd in the championship and stand 39 points behind Jorge Lorenzo in the standings with seven rounds to go and this unexpected set-back will slip him further down in the standings and defending his title could be all but over.
Here’s what Stoner said during today’s pre-event press conference at Brno: “I’m hugely disappointed for my team and all the guys around me.
We’ve been waiting since Indianapolis for my doctor in Australia to receive the discs of the MRI scan and x-rays to fully understand the situation.
The doctors in America were fantastic but I needed a specialist to study them and give me his report and explain exactly what’s gone wrong.
We were hoping that once they had seen the scans that it wouldn’t be as bad as I first suspected and that we could race here, but in fact it was the opposite and a lot worse than first expected.
We only found out at lunchtime today that it was game over but it seems this is our only option at this point.
We don’t have a timescale for my return yet – it depends on the surgery and how fast I can recover.
We still have a season to complete and this isn’t just me giving up, I want to get back to racing as soon as possible.
I have a job to do and a career to see through to the end and for it to finish like this would be a disaster, so I’ll be back as soon as I can to take part in as many races as I can before the end of the season”.
