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Joshua Coppins cancels his entry for the last MXGP |
Joshua Coppins cancels his entry for the last MXGP
Joshua Coppins
Joshua
Coppins has decided to pull out of the final round of the 2007
MX1 world championship. The recovery of the shoulder injury he sustained
at the 11th round of the championship at Loket (Czech Republic) held on
the 29th of July has not progressed sufficiently to enable him to try
and clinch back the 14 points gap on Steve Ramon. While Coppins tried
with some success to minimize the damage to his title changes at the
hard packed circuit in Donington last weekend, the prospect of the
physically demanding deep sand track of Lierop offers no hope for him to
close the point’s deficit.
Joshua’s
brave attempt to race at Donington earned him just seven
points, the result of a 14th position finish in the first moto. He
retired from the second moto early on because excessive pain prevented
him from continuing. The pain remained during this week despite trying
another special treatment. A CT scan of the shoulder revealed that the
race at Donington did not aggravate the injury, but that the healing of
the bone had not progressed any further. The only advice the doctor
could give was to take rest and wait until the bone has healed
completely.
Admitting defeat is not really in Josh’s
character and is even more
difficult to accept as he can be regarded as the moral winner of this
year’s championship, being the rider with the most GP wins, despite
missing three events. Before Loket Josh led the championship supremely
with 107 points and looked on his way to win his first world title very
comfortably. Yet injury is part of motocross racing, a fact that Coppins
is willing to accept; "Obviously I’m very disappointed, more than that,
it is difficult to explain in words how I feel right now. I have been
putting so much effort into the pre-season and it all seemed to pay off
with a huge lead prior to Loket. But in the end it proved not enough
when you get hurt like I did, that’s the hard reality of Motocross
racing. I’m focusing already on next year and I absolutely want to grab
the title then. I have proven to myself, my team and Yamaha that I can
do it and they are 110% behind me."
Yamaha Motor Europe racing division manager Laurens
Klein
Koerkamp is also bitterly disappointed with the unfortunate turn
the MX1 championship took. "All of us here at Yamaha share the
huge disappointment of Josh. We support his decision to pull out
of the last GP as it is simply not realistic to expect him to
even only close the gap in the deep sand of Lierop. Josh has
worked so hard for it this year, I believe harder than anybody,
and because of his preparation he dominated the first ten rounds
of the championship. For all of us it was utterly frustrating to
see his 107 points lead slowly diminish and not being able to do
anything about it, just to hope he would recover in time."
"We now look ahead to 2008. Antonio Cairoli’s debut MX1 win
last
week on the production 2008 YZ450F only added to our confidence
we that will have the package for Josh to reclaim the main
off-road title Yamaha has held for the last six years with
Stefan Everts."
Yamaha Motocross Team owner Michele Rinaldi has been
accustomed
to winning a lot in his career as team owner, so his feelings
are first of all with Josh; "After winning six consecutive world
championships as a team we can accept to hand over the No. 1
plate. We know what it feels like to win championships, but not
Josh. When you can dominate like he did in the first ten rounds,
it is terrible to be sidelined and seeing your title prospect
disappear. It does not feel right. However what remains positive
is that we made the right decisions for 2007 and I´m convinced
that Josh with Yamaha will again be the combination to beat in
2008."
With the MX1 world championship coming to a close this
weekend,
Yamaha is still in with a good chance to win the MX3 title with
Yves Demaria trailing leader Sven Breugelmans by only four
points with two rounds remaining. The MX2 rider and manufacturer
world championships have already been secured by Antonio Cairoli
making Yamaha’s 2007 motocross season very successful, yet not
as perfect as it could have been.
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