INTERVIEW
2015 WORLD OFF-ROAD CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES CHAMPION ROBBY BELL
P152
more emotional?
Yeah. It goes beyond the collarbone or ankle
or a knee or something like that. It's in your face—
your appearance does mean a lot no matter how
much pride you take in it. It's the first thing people
see. Especially for me, I really love to smile so to
lose all of my front teeth, it's been tough. But by
now I've accepted it. Obviously I'm on the road to
recovery and I have the date set for surgery next
year. Within a year and a half, two years, I'll have
a new smile. But in the mean time, it has been
tough because my smile was one of my favorite
features. Now I find myself, when I don't have my
temporary teeth in, I close-mouth smile. It's just
a more emotional, and like I said, a noticeable
injury. But definitely not my worst. As far as the
actual effects of the injury, it probably only took
three weeks to a month and I was fairly good. My
mouth was still sore a little bit, but I was still good
to go as far as training and talking and getting
back to normal life.
Why is it going to take a year and a half
before you can get a permanent fix?
Unfortunately because I lost so much bone,
they want to do two bone grafts. They want to
take it from my hip. We could use cadaver bone,
but there's a better chance of my body accepting
the graft if I use my own bone. So they have to
open up my hip and detach the muscle. It's a six-
week recovery before I can be back on the bike
so I had to schedule it where I had that kind of
time. So next summer is when it all worked out.
After that they'll wait about four months to make
sure it's good and they can do the initial screws
and then they have to wait I think another three or
four months to make sure that all takes, and then
they can do the bridge or abutment. Then I think
it's four months and I finally get the actual teeth
and then it's probably another month or two of the
cosmetics, making it look good. About summer of
'17 I should have a smile again.
Did that injury have to do with your deci-
sion not to race the Baja 1000 with your team
this year?
I JUST
GRENADED
MY FACE
AND ALSO HURT
MY ANKLE
FROM THE
IMPACT.
With the exception
of the Washington
rounds, Bell never
finished worse than
second in 2015.
