VOLUME 56 ISSUE 50 DECEMBER 17, 2019 P117
to do what I did this year was
kind of mind-blowing," he said.
"I didn't really expect that at all.
I podiumed every time I raced
and finished the race. I think I
podiumed triple the amount of
times I have in my career in one
year. It was definitely a bit above
and beyond what we expected.
Jared just came off a year where
he won 10 races and podiumed
15 times, so he's absolutely at
the top of his game. To come in
and shut things down after he
kind of took over, was honestly a
dream come true."
Before the season's halfway
mark, disaster struck. While train-
ing at the motocross track, Bau-
man injured his wrist in a crash.
At first, Bauman didn't realize that
he had broken his scaphoid and
the magnitude of that injury.
"That was a big-time moment
of panic," he said. "I didn't really
understand what I had done to
myself and what the severity of
it was. I went to get checked
out when I broke my hand, and
they said, 'either you're casted
for 12 weeks all the way up to
your shoulder, or we do surgery.'
It was 10 days before Laconia
when I was told that, and I had
surgery two days later. I freaked
out big time. Fortunately, Shayna
[Texter, Briar's girlfriend] deals
with a lot of stuff well. She
loaded up with me, and we flew
to California to go have surgery."
The timing was less than ideal.
His first two races—Laconia
Short Track and Lima Half-Mile—
after surgery were physically de-
manding cushion tracks. On top
of that, outside of a short break
in July, the month of August
held no time for a rest with four
races during the first two weeks.
He and his crew kept the injury
quiet. Bauman put his head
down and kept moving forward.
"I just didn't want anyone to
know," he said. "I knew no one
was going to race me any dif-
ferently. I thought, if I keep it to
myself, and if I continue to do
my own deal, maybe I'll convince
myself that it didn't actually hap-
pen, and it will be fine. Once the
helmet went on, it kind of got
to that point. I didn't really think
a whole lot about it. We were
back in the same rhythm we had
before the surgery."
SEALING THE DEAL
Going into the penultimate
round at the Minnesota Mile,
Bauman could clinch the title a
weekend early. He looked on
track to fulfill that, even take
In addition to the support from the team,
his girlfriend Shayna Texter has been
right with him when times get tough.
Eight days after having surgery for a
broken scaphoid, Bauman was back
racing on a rough Laconia Short Track.
