RS Racing’s Cat Green is continuing to improve at the Salford Royal Hospital after breaking her wrist and neck in a crash during the Monster British Motostar first free practice session last week at Oulton Park. Her partner, Jeff Hankin is confident that Green will get better soon, but has ruled out a possible return to the MCE British Superbike series for this year.
“We are not thinking that far ahead, but if I was a betting man I would not really expect to see her back for the rest of the season. If we do, then I will be over the moon. Long term she will be OK, and today she is due to have surgery to have some rods and plates inserted into her spine, because she has broken her neck in two places, and they are looking to rod and plate to stabilize everything,” said Hanklin, speaking to bikesportnews.com.
“She is in probably the best place in Europe, let alone the UK so for them this is a walk in the park, as they are very confident and happy that they have got everything under control. Once she has had the operation she should be home, in circa ten days, and then she can start re-cooperating because she has got a lot of soft tissue damage as well. But [the doctors] said as long as the neck is stable then they will be up for letting her come home and we can start getting her back up and walking properly.”
Green, the first woman to win a British Championship race, also suffered a lot of soft tissue damage, which will require months of treatment and physio.
“She has broken her wrist, and C4 and C5 in her neck, which is the middle part of the neck, as it were, and she has broken two of those. On the MRI scan, when they take the collar off she will have a lot of damage down the right hand side, even though the break is on the left, but the right hand side has suffered a lot of soft tissue trauma. The connector brace will be on for a couple of months, after her coming back from hospital, but there will be a lot of physio to try and get her upper body back strong again.”
The rider from Derby is trying to keep in good spirits, but Hankin said it is hard for her to stay in bed, because she is so used to being active and running about everywhere. But the pain is preventing her from doing anything.
“I think the pain and the morphine for the first few days was very hard on her, and just coming to terms with the fact that the season is already over. But she is in a place where they have given her a lot of confidence about coming out again.
"It is just mind numbing and boring for her because she sits up and after about ten minutes she starts to get pain down her right hand side which is where the nerves are being trapped between the slightly loose neck pieces, so she has to lie back down again. So most of the time she is horizontal, and consequently she is just bored to tears, as she is used to being the person who gets up and runs 5K four or five times a week.”
