Pro racer Jackson Blackmon, age 15, fractured and dislocated bones in his right forearm when he crashed his dirt bike while training April 4 in Milledgeville, Georgia.
“It happened on the motocross track,” said Blackmon, who was riding with fellow racer Ashton Yates at the time. “We were hitting this double. I hit it a good amount of times before, but I spun up a little bit on the run up and cased it [and crashed] and landed pretty hard on my arm. I guess the big bone in my arm [ulna] dislocated from my wrist, and the other bone [radius] broke. So we had surgery yesterday.”
Blackmon said he underwent surgery April 5 in his hometown of Rock Hill, South Carolina, to have his ulna relocated and the fracture in his radius set with pins. The surgery went well, he said, but the outlook for him competing with his Quarterley Racing/On Track Development team in the opening round of the 2017 MotoAmerica KTM RC Cup April 28-30 at Road Atlanta is not very promising.
“Road Atlanta isn’t looking the best for me, but we’ll have to play it by ear,” said Blackmon, who finished seventh in the 2016 MotoAmerica KTM RC Cup Championship and won the Yamaha bLU cRU YZF-R3 Cup last October. “It really depends on how my arm looks. There’s probably a 10% chance of making Road Atlanta, but VIR [May 12-14] is looking a bit better. I’m just trying to look on the positive side of things. Missing one round isn’t too bad.”