Roberts On the Mend
ROBERTS ON THE MEND
Two Months After Breaking His Back, King Kenny Is Back on Two Wheels
John Ulrich
Presstime flash! Roberts wins in Austria!
Just 17 days after his Sears Point test session, Kenny Roberts won the second Grand Prix in the 500cc World Championship series, in Austria. Roberts finished six seconds ahead of Suzuki mounted Virginio Ferrari after a back-and-forth dice that ended when Ferrari ran off the racetrack.
Roberts had practiced at the racetrack for a week before the event, and reported no pain during his victory ride. With 15 points from the win, Roberts has more points than he did after the second round in 1978.
Roberts’ chief rival, Barry Sheene, finished 12th with brake problems.
lot of people didn~t think that Kenny goberts could win the 5O~c Road Racinr World Charnpion~hip last year. and he did.
more pe~i~~ve44id~t nrng his title dowA the dram when he broke h~ ba~k ktWQ n~onth~ be1~e *e~ta?t the W?9 wki~ tesUr~ the Ia*est
Roberts didnt 4gree when othets thought his 1978 ambitions impossiblestead, he became World Champion.
He doesn4t agree with anybody who eI1s him he ca&t 40 ii a~in this year. injury or Ui) injury.) k wouldn't believe his doctors when they said he eouldn't heal last : enough to make the seaso~~~~ P round. chedu~4~ 1W~ weeks bef~~th~rrace-• eight weeks a~4e~ hi~'~ crashRoberts sh~w~4 up itt Sears Point Ra~e~ey neaçSonoq~, Caii~rnia. to try 4tding last vear'~ 5OO~. H~ h~d spent t~ree weeks in a Japanese hospital. o~ eck in~ American hospital. and 3½ week~~ar~ ing a restrietive back brace. unable. Lo end or sit. At S~ar~ Roberts talked about~. the crash: what c~iused it,bo~ it atI~cted his perspecti~~, whether oç not it would keep him from retaining his chainpion~ shin.
frhere~ a real fast right-bander coin> ing onto the straight at the Yamaha test course, and as I entered the turn at maybe 120 mph, the front wheel went away. The next thing I knew I was up against the guard rail, which was fairly close because in Japan, land is very expensive and thev don’t waste any of it. I hit the rail with mv back, paralyzed my insides, ruptured my spleen, fractured my left foot and had a compression of the 11th and 12th vertebrae. They went in and operated on the spleen, put me in a couple of casts, and in three weeks sent me home. I spent a week in a hospital here and a couple of w eeks at home, and then I went to the doctor’s for X-rays. They couldn’t understand why, but the compression was healed. I told them I had to race in Austria, the second round. The doctor had said that I wouldn’t make Austria but they couldn’t argue with the Xrays. It’s healed. That made a believer out of them—people do heal differently.
“What happened in Japan was that the Japanese test riders who were breaking in the engine weren’t running the whole side of the tire. When I get racing, I use the whole side of the tire. I went into that fast right-hander and when I got there I was really laid over, and when I got onto the side of the tire it just went away—it wasn’t scuffed in.
“When you ride as much as I do you get a little lazy. You do things that you shouldn’t. You sort of ride with the tires okay and the handlebars okay and the brakes not really working too good. You do it because it gets monotonous after awhile. I think that I'm going to have to be a little more careful about riding the things. I’m going to have to say, ‘Hey, that’s just not right, so fix it or else I’m not riding.’
“When you ride a motorcycle at that speed as many miles as I do, your odds really go up that the accidents are going to be good ones. I rack up a lot of miles a year testing for Goodyear and I fall off once or twice a year. When you’re in this sport you have to expect it. I expected it, but I really didn’t expect it (while) testing. You just get a little bit overconfident and you do things a little bit different w hen testing, let things slide a little bit—if the bike’s not right you’ll go out and ride it anyway. That’s changed now’. I won’t do that anymore.
“I haven’t been on a bike since the crash and I sat in a hospital quite a bit. It makes you think. I don’t think that my ability to ride the motorcycle and the feelings I need to ride have changed, but I may slow' down a little bit in testing, I know that.
“Racing is what I’ve done all my life and it’s made me very happy. I haven’t changed any of my feelings for racing except that next time I’m gonna be a little more careful in that goddamn corner. It’s one of those things. I didn’t really fall off any harder than I have previously in my career, except that I ended up with a couple of injuries. Before this, I’d never spent any time in the hospital, I’d never broken a bone.
“I just now got out of the brace, three days ago. My back is still a little sore. I can’t do much. I haven’t bent over, so I haven't used the muscles in my back. I’ve been swimming, which is the only thing that I can do. This is a trial run to see what muscles I have to build up before I get to Austria. I’ve never had a back injury and I’ve never ridden a motorcycle with a back injury, so I don’t know what’s going to start to hurt first, the compression or the muscles. After this tryout I’ll get back to the doctors to see what I can do. I’ll sit down with a therapist and we'll arrange an exercise that I can safely do before I show up in Europe. But the doctors didn’t want me to go over there and jump on a bike fresh, so the object of today is simply to go out and see how much the motorcycle does to me. There’s no sense doing a bunch of things if it (going to Europe) is going to be a wasted effort.’’
Roberts then jumped on his Yamaha and turned 17 laps of the tw isty 2.5-mile,
uphill-downhill course. Starting out slowly, Roberts gradually worked up his« speed and ended the session doing wheelies out of and through several turns, including the Turn 11 hairpin and the offcamber Turn Two, at the top of the track’s first hill. When he returned to the pits, he, pulled off his helmet and said “Fantastic! I rode it. My back hurts a little, but it’s nc$problem. Obviously there’s going to be no problem. I'm very relieved.
“It didn’t scare me too bad. It’s been aw hile since I’ve been on it. Physically, I'm okay, my back only hurts a little bit. But I couldn’t get my mind adjusted to as much' speed right away, to as fast as I was trying, to go right away to push my back up. Your mind is used to walking around and doing normal stuff. You’ve got to get it used to going fast and it’s hard to do.
“I feel confident mentally that Ell adjust to the speed and be able to do everything’ that I did before, and even better. But will I be able to do it quickly enough to w in the championship back? That’s the question.. Mentally, I don’t feel that there’s going to be a problem.
“The only thing that’s making this year interesting is that Eve missed the first race4 again, and that I am not 100 percent . . . not really prepared to race 110 percent as T did at the beginning of last year. It’s going to be extra pressure because I am the’ champion and I am expected to win.
“I went into this year sort of doing the World Championship again and to make, some money and have some fun. Now it’s something to accomplish again because they said I couldn’t do it. They said it couldn't be done last year—an American" first time out, with one bike, on special Goodyear tires that hadn’t been run before in Europe. That gave me a little extra boost to do it. This year, since Em 15 points down again and I’ve had an injury, they say itt can’t be done again. So that’s going to be a little more boost and I’m going to try alittle harder to do it.’’ E3
