Repsol Honda rider Nicky Hayden has been forced to withdraw from this weekend's Brno MotoGP round due to an injury he sustained qualifying for a supermoto race at X-Games 14 in Los Angeles two weeks ago.
The Kentucky Kid, who had the blessing of his team to compete at the event, is desperately upset for the Honda squad but said it is better to be fully fit for the next round than compounding a problem now.
“The injury is to a weight-bearing part of the foot and the doctors say that using too much pressure on the footpegs could very easily give me some big problems,” said Hayden who was riding a Honda CRF450 Supermoto bike and didn’t crash in the incident.

“I went to Dr Ting and got the opinion of other specialists. I’ve done a lot with Ting, he knows the sport very well and he feels it would be quite risky to ride. He and the other specialists say that if I rode this week I might have to fight the injury for the rest of the year.

"As hard a decision as it is and as bad as I feel about it, I think I’m better off staying home doing rehab and physio, then come back fit at Misano and try to finish the season strong.

"There’s been a lot of guys this year trying to ride less than a hundred per cent and actually making their problems worse, “said the 2006 MotoGP world champion.

Hayden insists he had the blessing of HRC to compete in the X Games and he said: “I certainly feel bad about it for my team and I apologise. I had the permission of HRC to do the Supermoto thing.

"I just wanted to do some riding during the break, have some fun and I thought that maybe it’d give me a little spark for the rest of the season, but it backfired on me.”