Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 4 JANUARY 27, 2015 P121 events surrounding Nelson's injury. "He was just getting his start with us and he had one bike at the time," Savino recalled. "Then I get this call that Jessy was in the hospital and he may have lost his thumb. I'm like, 'What?' It was rough and I honestly didn't know if the kid would come back." "I was in SoCal at the time and got a call from a doctor friend in the ER, telling me that Jessy had been injured in a crash and they were flying him up to Stanford. He told me that it didn't look good and he might lose his thumb. My stomach was in knots the whole way driving there," Wallace remembers. The doctors reconstructed Nelson's badly mangled hand the best they could, then hooked up a device to monitor the blood flow to the area, leaving Matt and Jessy to wait and hope for the best. "We were up and down through the night, trying to watch movies at three a.m. and doing anything we could to try to keep his spirits up," said Matt. Things took a turn for the worse when the alarm went off on the circulation monitor at around eight a.m. A team of sur- geons was assembled and Jessy was rushed in for emergency surgery in a last ditch effort to save his thumb. They sliced open his forearm, wrist to elbow, harvesting and transplanting a vein to service the injured area. When the alarm sounded again later that night, it was a jar- ring reality check that is clearly painful for Matt to recall even now, years later. "I'll never forget hearing the voice of this incredibly brave 12 year-old kid saying, 'Take it off, just take it off'. I get messed up just thinking about it. So now he has his forearm stitched from the vein removal, plus what seemed like half his hand was gone. We weren't even thinking about rac- ing, just thinking about the poor little guy's heart, you know—all his hopes and dreams. The kid stayed so strong and was so gnarly throughout the whole or- deal—there were (bad) times, for sure, but—it was amazing how he handled it." Matt, a longtime cyclist, helped Jessy train during the months following the injury and gives huge credit to Savino, Chuck Miller and everyone at Honda for the way they stood behind the Nelson family. "Knowing that Bill Savino and Honda were unwavering in their faith in him and it was an immea- surable boost to Jessy's morale at a time when he needed it most," says Wallace, now working as a photographer after several years doing the suspension for the Hart & Huntington race team. Savino was amazed by Nel- son's recovery, saying, "I think because he had such a strong support group around him, with Matt, his parents, the dealer- ships backing him up there—the kid pulled through it. The next thing we knew, we're back at Loretta Lynn's, he's got this prosthetic thumb in his glove and he's racing! And he never wanted to talk about it!" The rest is, shall we say, his- tory. Jessy continued his stellar amateur career without skipping a beat (or having a thumb), cul- minating in his 2011 matriculation from Troy Lee's amateur pro- gram, onto the factory-backed pro squad, then stamped it by winning the 2012 AMA Rookie of the Year award. Since then he has struggled a little, but showed plenty of promise, such as win- ning a moto at the Indiana round of the AMA 250 National Moto- cross Championship last year. Savino, now Honda's Manager of 4 Wheel Product Planning, is happy for Nelson's recent success, despite the TLD team switching to KTMs this year. "We love Jessy and would love to see him win a couple more main events. I just wish it wasn't on an orange bike. He has a long career in front of him and he could end up back here on our 450 team, someday. I truly believe they are a Honda family and he's a Honda kid." That is high praise from Big Red. Will this be Jessy's breakout year? He is third in points with four races to go and has the heart of a lion—I give him two thumbs up. CN

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