Joshua Coppins cancels his entry for the last MXGP
By TMX Archives on 31st Aug 07
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 titlechanges at the hard packed circuit in Donington last weekend, the prospect ofthe physically demanding deep sand track of Lierop offers no hope for him toclose 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 thesecond moto early on because excessive pain prevented him from continuing. Thepain remained during this week despite trying another special treatment. A CTscan of the shoulder revealed that the race at Donington did not aggravate theinjury, but that the healing of the bone had not progressed any further. Theonly advice the doctor could give was to take rest and wait until the bone hashealed completely.
Admitting defeat is not really in Josh's character and is even moredifficult to accept as he can be regarded as the moral winner of this year'schampionship, being the rider with the most GP wins, despite missing threeevents. Before Loket Josh led the championship supremely with 107 points andlooked on his way to win his first world title very comfortably. Yet injury ispart of motocross racing, a fact that Coppins is willing to accept; "ObviouslyI'm very disappointed, more than that, it is difficult to explain in words how Ifeel right now. I have been putting so much effort into the pre-season and itall seemed to pay off with a huge lead prior to Loket. But in the end it provednot enough when you get hurt like I did, that's the hard reality of Motocrossracing. I'm focusing already on next year and I absolutely want to grab thetitle then. I have proven to myself, my team and Yamaha that I can do it andthey are 110% behind me."
Yamaha Motor Europe racing division manager Laurens Klein Koerkamp is alsobitterly disappointed with the unfortunate turn the MX1 championship took. "Allof us here at Yamaha share the huge disappointment of Josh. We support hisdecision to pull out of the last GP as it is simply not realistic to expect himto even only close the gap in the deep sand of Lierop. Josh has worked so hardfor it this year, I believe harder than anybody, and because of his preparationhe dominated the first ten rounds of the championship. For all of us it wasutterly frustrating to see his 107 points lead slowly diminish and not beingable to do anything about it, just to hope he would recover in time."
"Wenow look ahead to 2008. Antonio Cairoli's debut MX1 win last week on theproduction 2008 YZ450F only added to our confidence we that will have thepackage for Josh to reclaim the main off-road title Yamaha has held for the lastsix years with Stefan Everts."
Yamaha Motocross Team owner Michele Rinaldi has been accustomed to winninga 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 tohand over the No. 1 plate. We know what it feels like to win championships, butnot Josh. When you can dominate like he did in the first ten rounds, it isterrible to be sidelined and seeing your title prospect disappear. It does notfeel right. However what remains positive is that we made the right decisionsfor 2007 and Im convinced that Josh with Yamaha will again be the combinationto beat in 2008."
With the MX1 world championship coming to a close this weekend, Yamaha isstill in with a good chance to win the MX3 title with Yves Demaria trailingleader Sven Breugelmans by only four points with two rounds remaining. The MX2rider and manufacturer world championships have already been secured by AntonioCairoli making Yamaha's 2007 motocross season very successful, yet not asperfect as it could have been.
