Jett Lawrence, coming back just 66 days after thumb surgery, was perhaps not expected to go right back to Jett Lawrence.
As in, winning races. Yet, the scoreboard after SMX Playoff 1 in Concord, North Carolina doesn’t look much different than it did before he got hurt. He won!
That’s impressive and that’s why his Honda HRC Progressive Team Manager Lars Lindstrom was thinking Jett might be an alien. Well, we’ve had a few other UFO sightings through the years. Here are a few and tell us your memories in the comments below.
Ryan Villopoto, 2011: RV broke his leg badly with a crash while leading the 2010 St. Louis Supercross. He was out the rest of the season but returned for Anaheim 1 in 2011, which he won.
He even had them show X-rays of his broken leg during his opening ceremonies video, just to show how much pain he was dealing with months prior.
He then went on to one of the best season’s anyone has ever had, winning the 450 AMA Supercross and AMA Motocross Titles, The Monster Million at the first-ever Monster Energy Cup, and led Team USA to a clutch win at the FIM Motocross of Nations.
Christophe Pourcel, 2009: Pourcel and Antonio Cairoli were locked in as rivals to be the next star of the GP scene when CP landed on a downed rider on a blind jump in Ireland and darn near ended his career.
He was paralyzed for a bit, confined to a wheelchair, and suffered internal problems that would plague him for years. But after missing all of 2008, he mounted a comeback, in the U.S., with Monster Energy/Pro Circuit Kawasaki.
He won his very first race back, the 2009 250SX East opener in Houston, and went on to score back-to-back 250SX Championships.
Trey Canard, 2013: Not quite a win, but he came about a lap away from it. Trey got landed on at the Los Angeles Supercross at Dodger’s Stadium in 2012, and broke his back.
That very nearly ended his career. He missed all of the 2012 season but returned ready for 2013, battling Davi Millsaps for the A1 win. Canard led for a bit, but Millsaps got him in the end.
James Stewart, 2003: James’ last-to-first comeback in the 2003 Budds Creek 125 National is legend, as he put the Bubba Scrub on public display and changed the game that day.
But even more remarkable, that race was also his return from six weeks off with a broken collarbone! He didn’t lose a moto for the rest of the summer.
Rick Johnson, 1989: As the story goes, the big wrist injury Rick Johnson suffered in practice at round one of the 1989 AMA Nationals changed the sport forever.
RJ went from as dominant a force as there was and then suddenly into the void stepped the likes of Jeff Stanton, Damon Bradshaw, and Jean-Michel Bayle.
Yes, RJ’s days of dominance did end due to the wrist injury, but, his very first race back from injury really didn’t indicate that.
He won! RJ returned for the ’89 Unadilla 205cc USGP and scored the overall win. It looked like all way back to normal, prompting Honda’s Roger De Coster to say in Cycle News, “The Boss is Back.
” He was, on that weekend. But Unadilla, a high-speed track, was better for Johnson’s wrist than tight tracks with lots of braking. Like supercoss.
The wrist kept getting worse, and RJ never returned to championship form. He did win the 1990 50cc National at Unadilla, though. It was his last national.
Ricky Carmichael/James Stewart 2004/2008: The gold standard, and you really can’t split these two. Both RC and JS came back from missed supercross seasons with ACL surgery to get back to AMA Motocross and win immediately. To the tune of perfect 24-0 seasons!
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