The true Marquez blunder that caused lasting damage

The veil of secrecy surrounding the current physical condition of Marc Marquez is wrapped so tightly that there has not been so much as a glimpse inside. Honda, his manager Emilio Alzamora, his brother Alex, and the doctors who have been in charge of fixing his right humerus have given little indication of his progress from the Spanish Grand Prix crash that curtailed his 2020 MotoGP season in July.

Such vague signs leave little room for optimism, with Marquez having already missed an entire year's racing and no clear indication of when he might be fit to return.

The Spanish sports daily newspaper Mundo Deportivo broke the story more than a month ago that the six-time world champion was considering the possibility of a third operation, with his current rehabilitation programme not producing the required results. According to HRC Team Manager Alberto Puig, who spoke last weekend in Portugal, Marquez will make a decision on possible surgery very soon.

Whether or not he goes back under the knife, this disastrous recovery has highlighted the sheer enormity of the mistake Marquez made following the first surgery. Forcing his return to the track at the Andalusian GP, just four days after he'd left theatre, would cost him the rest of the season. And that is the best-case current scenario. Another operation would likely rule Marquez out of the start of the next campaign too - and that's if it all goes well.

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All things considered, it now makes sense that Andrea Dovizioso opted to take a sabbatical in 2021, rather than committing to a testing role with either Yamaha or KTM. As it stands, the door is open to Honda should Marquez's return be delayed any further.

Despite the solid job done by Stefan Bradl, who has gradually improved over the course of this season and scored his best result with seventh at the final round in Portugal, the Japanese giant cannot afford to rely solely on the steady hands of the German and new signing Pol Espargaro if it is to fight for the title.

It has been five months since Marquez's first operation, making it four and half months since the second operation required to correct the damage caused by his premature return at Jerez. The real state of his right humerus remains a mystery, but the radio silence coming from the doctors that took care of it has inevitably left the debating floor open to armchair surgeons not privy to the patient's notes.

That famous video of Marquez doing press-ups while still in his room at the clinic, and from the medical he somehow passed at Jerez on the Friday, are graphic proof of a monumental misjudgement

What we do know is that Marquez has had a change of tactic and put himself in the hands of the Mayo Clinic, based in the USA. Their protocol is to give the body every biological opportunity to heal itself and to accelerate the fusion process of badly eroded bones using regenerative medicine produced by the body itself - including bone marrow and platelet rich plasma.

If that doesn't work, he will go back under the knife and will undergo a bone graft taken from his pelvis (an area high in red blood cells). The risks are high, firstly because of the bad state of the bone but also because of the possibility of damaging the radial nerve, which has so far escaped untouched by the previous two interventions. Recovery time, meanwhile, would be around six months.

The plate that was inserted in the first surgery was subsequently broken by Marquez's premature return - which he aborted after FP3 when he recognised that something wasn't right. According to some experts who viewed the x-ray that Marquez himself published on leaving the hospital, the rigidity caused by twelve screws in the bone won't have helped. This is where Alzamora's words ring true: "If there is a problem it is because things weren't done correctly from the start."

That famous video of Marquez doing press-ups while still in his room at the clinic, and from the medical he somehow passed at Jerez on the Friday, are graphic proof of a monumental misjudgement. We still don't know the full extent of it yet, but it is already significant enough to command a dubious position in the history books, with Joan Mir taking full advantage of his absence to record a historic triumph for Suzuki.

Evidently, the person most responsible for the decision to try and contest the Andalusian GP was the rider himself, although he could only have made that choice if the doctors allowed it.

It was a move that caused differences of opinion amongst those closest to him. Some, like Alzamora, advised him to rest until the bone had fused. But clearly there were others who gave Marquez false hope that he could race again straight away.

Those people failed to weigh up the risks of an intended act of heroism that has unfortunately turned into a disaster. Whatever happens from here, this whole crazy episode must serve as a lesson in correcting the procedures around the evaluation of rider injuries and the consequences of possible relapses.