Rockstar Motul Suzuki's Cody Cooper will miss round three of the Rockstar MX Nationals this weekend at Newcastle after he sustained a collapsed lung at round two at Appin last weekend.
Cooper, who had just wrapped up the New Zealand Motocross Championship the weekend before, was firing on all cylinders and dominated the opening Pro Open moto at Appin.
With a handy lead in the second he went to swap ruts and crashed hard. He remounted and continued around at the back of the pack and completed the race.
Feeling pretty sore he fronted for moto 3 but pulled off after it became difficult to breath.
Later that night he went to hospital where it was revealed he had a collapsed lung or Pneumothorax. A Pneumothorax is the result of the chest cavity filling with air making it very hard to breath, aside from very painful.
"I just went to hospital for a check up as i was supposed to be testing all week," Cooper explained. "I just went in for a checkup and maybe something for the pain and ended up being admitted and spent three nights."
Doctors inserted a tube into Coopers chest cavity to release the air and control the injury for the three days.
The injury comes as a big blow to Cooper and the Rockstar Motul Suzuki team as he had found form and surprisingly was getting out of the gate like a scolded cat. Anyone that had seen a race so far this season would have to have had him in their top three as a championship chance with many saying it was his to lose.
Despite the injury Cooper is still fairly upbeat and remains positive. As bad as the injury sounds, strangely, there was no actual rib broken so no bones will need to heal before he can ride again. This should cut down recovery time a good deal.
"I should be right for the 4th round at Murray Bridge in 4 weeks," he said. "I am going to be dropping a heap of points but the championship is not over until the last round. I can't change much now so the focus will be on winning races now. I just need to go as hard as i can win as many races as i can," he concluded.
Cooper will also have to be cleared by Doctors before he is able to fly back to his home in New Zealand.
Although it's all bad news for Cooper there was some good news. During a shopping trip he was able to score an iPad 2 - one of the only people in the country to do so!
Main Photo: Cooper was monitored by Racesafe
Credit: Garry Morrow
