It’s common knowledge within the motorcycle road racing community that riding motocross motorcycles have a tendency to do more harm than good. A few years back, current Yamaha Superbike pilot, Josh Hayes had a motocross accident which temporarily side lined him. Last year Nick Hayden’s dirt bike bit him when he came up short on a jump while practicing for X Games 14. Earlier this spring Corona Honda’s Neil Hodgson suffered a serious shoulder injury at the helm of his dirt bike. Although he’s back racing, the effects of his latest smash-up still linger and prevent him from riding at 100%.
 
LCR Honda’s Randy De Puniet is the latest professional road racer to fall victim to his MX bike when he took a spill while training in France last week. De Puniet broke his ankle in the crash necessitating surgery and installation of metal to fix the damage. Although he claims he’ll be ready to race this weekend in Brno, as the MotoGP gets back to action after the end of the three-week long summer break, it’s a fair assumption that he won’t be healthy enough to better his third place finish at Donington.

When we interviewed Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo last month, he stated that while he loves riding motocross it’s just too dangerous for him to do anymore. The Bostrom brothers have also mentioned that they’ve given up their dirt biking riding roots because the injury factor is just too high. When you consider how insanely high the level of competition is in professional road racing it amazes me that any pro road racer would hop on a dirt bike. It's almost like you're playing with a loaded pistol. Sure it’s fantastic training, plus the fun factor is right up there with racing; yet the repercussions are just too high if you wish to compete amongst today’s road racing elite. Maybe teams are going to have to start inserting stipulations into their riders’ contracts stating the obvious.