Rebecca Henderson (Orbea Manufacturing unit) will have simply taken a twelfth consecutive elite cross-country identify in a row on Sunday on the GWM Mountain Motorcycle Nationwide Championships, however it used to be ache fairly than pleasure writ all throughout her face as she slumped to the bottom clutching her shoulder in an instant after overcoming Isabella Flint (Cervélo Australia Off-Highway) within the dash that determined the tight fight.
The 33-year-old used to be feeling the affect of a crash within the opening lap of the race and after clinical exams the cause of her pained expression used to be crystal transparent – it grew to become out that she had raced to victory within the brutal rainy and windy prerequisites with a fractured shoulder.
“The thumb has a possible small fracture – it’s hard for them to say yes or no which I guess is a good outcome in itself – and the scaphoid is fine so no surgery. It’s just still really sore and I can’t use it so I guess I will recover in good time.”
The wounds, alternatively, imply that Henderson should wait some time prior to launching into the UCI Mountain Motorcycle Global Sequence, set to get underway in Brazil on April 12-14, and also will fail to see the precious issues on be offering on the Oceania Championships this weekend.
“No Brazil is a huge hit for me I made some big commitments to myself late last year that I was going to go all in for Brazil,” stated Henderson.
The rider from Canberra spent seven years with Primaflor Mondraker however after the squad closed she has shifted to Orbea Manufacturing unit Racing for 2025 and Brazil used to be set to be her first Global Cup with the brand new workforce. Henderson had was hoping it could be the beginning of an upswing, with the rider who had spent years within the best few spots of the XCO global ratings having completed 10th within the UCI XCO Global Cup Scores in 2024.
“I just wanted to be back at my best, to see what was possible,” stated Henderson. “I worked really hard to also put a different support network around me to help me be the best I could possibly be.”
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“There’s been a lot of effort behind the scenes for that and I felt like I’ve been training as good as ever. I’ve been training really hard … and it was about time for me to be accountable to myself for the goals I had set so that’s really hard to have that ripped away, but it is what it is,” stated the rider, concluding that she would now as an alternative re-assess, alternate the objectives and proceed operating.