He mightn’t say what the future holds at a media event on Wednesday: “I have other priorities at the moment, but it would be cool to race once more.”
The prerequisite for new starts is competitiveness, but whether that will ever be the case once more “no one knows at the moment.” In any case, he wants to ride a motorcycle once more if the healing continues to progress well. “There can be so many setbacks, but it can also go in a very positive direction. That will become clear when I can start putting weight on my foot once more, when I see whether it hurts and what the mobility is like. And then I will see whether the fire still glows in me or whether it has already gone out.”
“A lot of positive things happened”
He wasn’t so optimistic the previous week, but a lot of positive things had happened in the last few days, the 37-year-old told journalists while lying in his hospital bed. The computer tomography images showed that the bone formation in the ankle joint was going well. “A five-centimeter hole in my foot was reconstructed with bone parts from my hip, with foreign bones and with bone chips. The CT images looked extremely good, better than I imagined,” said Walkner, who was in his ankle After the fall I only saw a “pile of crumbs”. The motorcyclist also has a thin layer of cartilage in his joint to prevent bone from rubbing on bone. “This has given me a positive energy boost and I think I’ll be pain-free in a year or two.” Since Friday he no longer has to take morphine for the pain.
The major operation on the ankle joint, which was carried out by doctor Michael Plecko and his team at the AUVA accident hospital in Graz, took around 15 hours. The missing piece of bone was filled and even periosteum was transplanted for optimal nutrient supply. The medical team also removed a larger flap of skin from Walkner’s thigh, which was transplanted to the ankle joint to provide additional blood supply and reconnected to an artery that had been severed in the accident.
Plecko described that the goal of the operations was to restore full resilience to the joint. However, this is difficult because of the “severity of the trauma”. Not only were the bones in the ankle joint as well as the tibia and fibula broken, the skin and soft tissue as well as nerves and vessels were also bruised. The risk of infection is high with such open injuries. The wounds are now almost completely closed and the risk of infection and thus possible loss of the leg is very low, the primary assured.
Home for a week
After the six surgeries, two of which had already taken place in the USA as acute care, there are likely to be more surgery appointments in the coming months. The transplanted skin flap is currently still very voluminous. Plecko announced that it will probably be reduced in size in regarding six months and some of the many screws and plates in the foot will also be removed. For now, Walkner is allowed to go home for a week on Friday, following which rehabilitation at the AUVA rehabilitation clinic in Tobelbad is on the agenda. “The leg now needs time to heal,” emphasized the doctor, who had also operated on Max Franz and Nicole Schmidhofer.
Of course, Walkner followed the Dakar Rally and his KTM team from the hospital: “I was there for every kilometer. At the beginning it was difficult for me to watch.” The KTM riders Kevin Benavides (ARG) and Toby Price (AUS) came fourth and fifth respectively in mid-January, a respectable gap of more than half an hour. The Salzburg man said that his team hadn’t expected that: “The others obviously found more than us. Our improvements apparently weren’t good enough.”
If it doesn’t work out to return to the motorcycle grid, Walkner might also imagine switching to four wheels or another position at KTM: “I would like to pass on my knowledge and experience.” He definitely wants to try the four wheels, but for now he wants to take his first steps once more, put full weight on his foot once more and be able to walk without crutches.
