Zach Osborne Out with Broken Wrist

Unfortunately Zach Osborne has crashed and broke his left wrist during the pre-qualification practice. The Utag Yamaha.com rider and winner of the GP of Turkey in Istanbul last month, lost control with an engine problem doubling into a triple. Pale and shaken after the spill the teenager was taken to a nearby hospital and was diagnosed with a broken left radius, meaning a 5-6 week hiatus.

“It just locked up as I went for the double and put me over the top,” he said. “I knew straight away that I had probably broken it because there was a lot of pain. We went to the hospital and the x-ray confirmed it. There was not a lot I can do but I will stay here with the guys and hope to heal up as fast as possible.”

Zach joins a hefty list of absent and walking wounded. Factory saddles in the Kawasaki (Seb Pourcel, left shoulder), Honda (the entire Martin Honda squad of Kevin Strijbos, broken wrist, and Marc de Reuver, broken hip and vertebrae with long term problems and CAS Honda’s Cedric Melotte, back), Suzuki (2007 world champion Steve Ramon out for three months, fractured C7) are currently free, and KTM’s main MX2 hope Shaun Simpson has been written off for the season with a badly broken left leg. Grand Prix of Benelux winner and works KTM rider Jonathan Barragan has damaged ligaments in his left shoulder and still doesn’t know if he can compete at Agueda.