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Miguel Oliveira wanted to be present in Qatar. His arm is still in a sling around his neck after his injury (a dislocation of the sternoclavicular joint and ligament injury) in Argentina, but he could no longer stay away from the race track, especially now that the Portuguese Pramac team rider is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. "It's been more or less four weeks since the injury, and things are improving," he said. "In the first three, I was completely immobilized, but I still need time to heal. I have tests scheduled for Monday, and we'll understand better."
Meanwhile, he's happy with his progress.
"I don't feel much pain. I'm starting to move around a bit, and things are progressing well," he continued. "It was a very strange injury and worse than I expected. I was surprised. I thought I had simply broken my collarbone and that I'd be okay in three weeks. Instead, it's more complicated."
Oliveira has no idea what happened to him.
"The pain alarmed me. I thought it was something serious, like a broken bone. For the first hours, no one knew what I had. Even from the X-rays, everything was normal. By chance, at the medical center, when they put the suit on the right side of my body, I felt a 'crack' and thought they had definitely broken a bone," he said, downplaying it with a smile. "Instead, with that maneuver, they reduced the dislocation. I thought I had a fractured clavicle and didn't understand how the X-rays showed nothing, so I called my doctor and he told me that I had a ninety-nine percent sternoclavicular dislocation. He told me not to move my arm. I went home and tt was confirmed."
Now he can start thinking about returning.
"They told me it would take two months, and I said there was no way I wasn't getting on the bike for that long!" he said, jokingly. "We're not trying to shorten the time. I'm doing physiotherapy and started moving slowly again, you can't speed up healing a tendon. In fact, doing more would make it worse. I want to race again, but when I'm well. At the moment, I don't know if there's going to be a fifty or a one hundred percent chance of going to Jerez. We have to evaluate things week by week."
Miguel, however, is chomping at the bit.
"I'd jump on the bike tomorrow, but it's rather unrealistic right now," he said. Then he added, seriously: "Like I said, I'll get an MRI on Monday to see how my tendons are healing and if I'm able to move my shoulder more. A few days before the Jerez GP, I'll know for sure if I can be there or not."
Unfortunately, the rider from Portugal is used to being in the infirmary.
"It's the third year in a row that I have an injury after an accident with another rider, and I don't know why," he admitted. "I seem to attract certain situations. I had never crashed on the Yamaha and, when it happened, I hurt myself. There's some frustration, but I have to look ahhead and not getting caught in a downward spiral."
There's also been another thing on his mind: the possibility that the airbag may have somehow affected such a strange injury.
"It's something I've thought about and talked about," Oliveira said. "I'm not sure the airbag increases safety that much. It definitely reduced the chance of my breaking my collarbone, but I had a sternoclavicular dislocation. I don't even think it's safe to roll in gravel with your arms out because the airbag inflates. I'm not saying we don't need the airbag, but there's room to improve the system, especially for the volume of air used, because every rider has a different physique, and everyone has their own preferences on how tight the suit should be. I think we can talk about that. Dainese told me that they'll analyze the data but they also have to follow the rules, so it's more the FIM that has to think about it."
