Racer X Online: What’s up, ET? How are you, man?
Eli Tomac: Hey. I’m doing well. Recovery has been going well. I’m really close to the three-month mark. I think I’m coming up on 12 weeks. Getting around pretty well. I’ve been able to get into some legit cardio work, so things are good right now.

You mentioned to me that we’ve seen so many athletes deal with Achilles tendon tears, partial tears, full tears, and it looks really, really bad. You were telling me at the intro that you were expecting it to be absolutely, god-awful, terrible, and it hasn’t been. It’s bad because you had to miss time, but it wasn’t the ultimate worst thing that you’ve heard and read about that we had seen, too.
Yeah. I just compare that to my shoulder injury back in 2015. I would say it’s probably been a little bit easier than my rotator cuff repair. You still have to work on a lot of range of motion and strength with this Achilles, but I feel like it just keeps making progress every few days. I haven’t had many hiccups with it, and then according to physical therapy protocols, everything has been on track. I haven’t had any hiccups. So, that’s what has been good about it and that’s what gave me hope of returning to normal. That’s why I signed another year. I feel like, and I’m on track to being healthy and fine again.

Is there an Achilles specialist that you consulted with? Obviously you guys have all the great doctors in Colorado, the Olympic training center. Is there an Achilles guy you talked to? I don’t even know if there is one.
There’s a foot and ankle guy, so that’s who does the Achilles. Just that part of your body, that’s the spot they focus on. It’s a foot and ankle guy who does the Achilles repairs.

Yours was torn all the way or partially torn?
It was a full rupture. They sew it together and then they kind of just overlap it and sew it together.

And scar tissue I guess is an issue, could build up, right? But you’ve got to break through that at some point, I guess.
Yeah. That part is a little bit tough. You get this weird little bump there and that’s just from the scar tissue. That’s part of the healing though. Part of the deal.

Coming back next year, we saw the press release. I’m guessing the same kind of deal, supercross only and you can decide motocross or SMX option? Same deal?
Yup. That’s how it is right now. Supercross only right now and just see how things go. That’s what I anticipate is supercross only, but we kind of are leaving that option there for moto [Pro Motocross] and SMX.

Any limitations do you think when you get back riding? Did they tell you anything about things that you may not be as good at? Your foot is in a boot, on a peg, so I don’t imagine there would be. What do you anticipate for your riding style or riding a dirt bike again? Any limitations?
The hardest thing to get back is your heel lift. So that’s basically you’re just standing on your toes. I can do that right now with two feet no problem. The hardest thing to do is a single-leg heel lift. That’s lifting your heel off the ground and then controlling that drop also. So, I don’t feel like I’m going to have an issue with range of motion. My range of motion is actually really good so far. But I guess the last thing that I’m trying to get back is when you’re standing on your toes, just that general strength and then controlling a heel drop, which would be supercross in the rhythm section. So, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, but at this point in time I feel like I’m totally going to get there and be fine. Thinking of modifications, we have so many options with boots now. I feel like I’m going to be fine. If I’m in any supportive shoe right now, it just gives me a lot of confidence. So with that being in a moto boot, I feel like I won’t have any troubles.

We know you’re coming back. I want to talk about the injury a little bit and the night and all of that stuff, but when did you decide to come back? Were you on the verge of retiring, or was it pretty much like, “I think I’ll come back. We’ll see how it goes?” How close did you come to hanging it up?
I was very close to hanging it up. Very close. At first I was totally pissed, and then I was just angry at the world, angry at everything. That was my first thought. Then it was disbelief. Then I was kind of over it. I accomplished a lot of things, and do I really need to do any more? That’s what was going through my head. Then it turned into, I don't want to end my career like this. I feel like I still can do this, and I have the confidence and I have enough time to get back to being healthy to try to make another run at what I had going, which was leading a series. So, what it really came down to was I just did not want to finish my career rolling off the track with my foot hanging off the side of my bike. So that thought in my head is what drove me to signing another year. I’m motivated to race another year and try to go out on my own terms. Sometimes you can’t control that, but that’s the reason for coming back.

In the aftermath of the injury, we talked about that. We’re like, what a shame if he doesn’t come back. He was going to win the supercross title and then he’s not, and then we never see him again. So, I think you’re a driven guy. You’re an all-timer in the sport. You have nothing to prove, but I guess who wants to go out like that, in front of their hometown crowd and all that.
It was a miserable experience. It was the ultimate nightmare. I was leading the race. I had 18 points or something in the championship. Two races to go, while I’m leading the second-to-last race. It was like the worst thing ever, and then to not even crash. It wasn’t like I had a crazy cartwheel into the stands and just threw it away. I just was literally jumping through the rhythm section and that was it. Just blew out.

Did you know immediately it had happened? Did you know what you did?
Yeah. When I landed, I felt like my leg was broke, is what it really felt like. I had this burning, tingling sensation, and I thought that was my tib/fib broken. I thought there was maybe blood in my boot, but then I get back to the truck and they pulled my boot off and my leg’s not crooked by any means or anything. There’s no blood. I’m like, what the heck? One of the doctors in there, they were like, “We know what this is.” They twist the back of your calf, and your heel will move if your Achilles is intact, but he pushed the back of my calf and my foot didn’t move and that’s the positive test. They call it the Thompson test.

I was thinking your foot would just drop down and you wouldn’t be able to control it.
It’s that, too. You can’t lift it. It’s kind of dead. But they can really tell if it’s ruptured if they do this test where they’re pushing the back of your calf, and if that ligament is attached then your foot moves with it. But if it’s just flopping dead, then they know it’s torn.

We were talking about you and how much pain you must have been in, and you kind of casually rode around the track, waited to find an opening, rode off the track… We were like, can you imagine how much pain he was in? You were handling it very well. I guess you can’t drop the bike. We were also amazed at how well you handled getting off the track in that kind of pain.
It was very painful initially. Right when I landed, it was crazy painful, but at the same time you have all this adrenaline going and then you have all these thoughts in your head. It hurt, but at the same time my adrenaline just kind of got me off the track and to the A-Stars medical rig there. I was in pure shock. Shock took over the pain, too. It was like a bad dream.

Did you watch Salt Lake on TV?
I didn’t watch the end of the race. I watched the start of it.

I would think you’d smash your TV, or you wouldn’t even put it on.
Yeah. I’ll tell you what, I didn’t watch the start of the first couple rounds of motocross. That I was not paying attention to. I was pretty bitter the beginning of motocross.

I can imagine. Along with the work and the effort, the money lost, all of that. I talked to [Ricki] Gilmore shortly after that. Gilmore was crushed. Josh Ellingson [mechanic], your whole team around you, everybody. It’s unbelievable the thing you have to go through.
I go back to it again, but it wasn’t like I crashed. I didn’t hit a Tuff Block. I was just going through the rhythm lane. That’s how it was taken away. It was pretty jacked, but I guess that’s racing.
I watched it a few times. There’s some internet experts out there that were talking about the way you ride and the way the bike’s suspension was too soft. I can’t see anything. It just looks normal. You went a tad long. Nothing you would not have done anyway. I don't know how much you broke it down. Is there anything that you did wrong or anything that you can see?
No. Here’s the deal. I do believe that the modern style is riding more on the balls of our feet. I’ve always focused on that, riding on my toes and the balls of my feet. I think it is a more vulnerable position to hyper-extend your Achilles, and that’s what happened. I’ve been through that repetition a million times. Never had any problems. I’ve overshot stuff way worse. Cased stuff way worse and had no problems at all. So, it was a freak deal. With that being said, I wouldn’t have changed anything else. There was nothing I could do in that situation to prevent that, in my opinion. Maybe if I would have landed more on the middle of my foot, maybe it wouldn’t have snapped. It’s really hard to say. Then talking to the doctors, the most likely group of person to have this injury I think is a male from 30 years to 59, or something. Of course I’m in the age group, the 30-year-old. Then they say you can basically do them at any time. You can do them stepping off curbs. It can just happen.

I follow a lot of mainstream sports and the guys are doing the simplest exercise and they tear it. There’s no rhyme or reason. But your riding style is partly why you’re so damn good. You changed the riding style with legs and riding on the balls of your feet and not sitting down. Those are the things that made you the champion you are, so you can’t really change that.
It would be hard to change it, and I would be riding slower, in my opinion. It’s such a more athletic position to be in, but that does put that Achilles in a more prone position to be injured.