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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1542347
Fonseca Iniured
-eam
Honda's Emesto Fonseca suffered
I a spinal
injury
on
Thurrday, Harch
g,
while
practicing
near
his home in Temecula,
California,
The former l25cc
'Supercross
Champion
from
Costa
Rica suffered a frac-
ture to the C7 vertebra and
bruising to the
spinal cord.
"Emesto
was out
practicing
on
Tuesda,
and he was at his track
in Jbmecula, and we
had a couple of
technicians out tfier€ as
well," said
Honda's Chuck Hiller, manater,
motorcycle sports.
"We
had
planned
on
doing som€ testing that day, but hadn't real-
ly started
yet.
This was a very simple crash,
nothint violent
-
he was coming
into
a cor-
ner. there were some little bump6
going
into
the corner, nothint big, the bike kind oI
bucked him up a litde bit, and he
iust
kind of
flipped over to the ride and ultimately didn't
8er
his hands in
fron!
of
him
berore
he {ell...
It
was
[a
crash]
like
we've all
done a 100
!ime5, but this
particular
time, he was unfor-
tunate and incurred a spinal-cord iniury
"He
was transported to, I believe,
Riverside Communit,,
[Hospital],
and that s
where they began their e\.alua!ion,"
l"liller
continued.
"There
were rumo6 that
it
took hours
ffor
pararnedics
to arrive
on the
scene] - 15 minutes, and
the
emergency
personnel
were there. Staff
members and
people
at the track
did not move him; he
was
[comfonable],
he was awale, he was
calm, there was no
grant
excitemem or any-
tfiing on hiB
part
or on our
paft,
and
we
wah-
ed until the experts
tot
there to
fiove
him
and evaluate him.
The
thing
drat did take
long was the e\aluation
process
once
they
did
8et
there -
iust
standard procedure for
any
EMT when they arrive at an accident or
a situation like this.
'Once
he was stabilized, they
got
him on
a boa!'d and
got
him to the hospital for fur-
ther evaluation,
[His
doctor] came to the
hospital and assi$ed with the e\raluation and,
at that
point,
they started brindng
in
the
experts to take a
look
at him and see what
[to
do] next,
At
that time, there
was
swelling, They did some X-rays and
realiued
that
there was
some
vertebrae
problems,
and
they stabilized
him. Normally it takes a
number of days for evaluation... as well as
puning
on a halo, but
[because
of] Emesto's
lexcellent]
condidon, the
next day
theywere
able to
prt the halo on him and b68in trac-
tion, which
[takes]
th€ pr€ssure off of the
spinal cord and also your back.
"Usually the next step is that th€y'll go in
and do the op€ration and do plating to the
venebrae,
jult
to stabilize everythint and
hopefully further reduce swellint arcund the
spinal cord. He's in such
treat
shape that the
swelling went down in one day. They re-e\aal-
Lrated him and decided that
they would do
the surSery sooner. OriSinally
h was
8oin8
to
be
prhaps this Monday
fi"larch
l3], but $€y
sp€d that up b€cause of his conditioning to
yeslerday
lFriday.
March l0]. He had a six-
hour surtery; ev€rythint went well in sur-
tery
They did find that there was a little bit
more damage than they originalt anticipated,
nothing ne(arsarit to the spinal cord but to
his venebrae area, and they did
go
ahead and
plate
his vertebr.e with two
plates
and
screws,
which is
standard
pro