Remy Gardner plans post-season surgery: ‘You’ve got the back of a 45-year-old!’

Remy Gardner has revealed that he will undergo back surgery following the World Superbike finale on October 18-20 at Jerez.

Speaking after his third and final MotoGP appearance of the season as a Yamaha wild-card at Motegi, the 26-year-old explained that Jerez will be his last track outing of the year.

“I think the factory [SBK] boys are doing a test in November. I'm not doing it because I'm having surgery on my back, so I'll be off the bike until next year after Jerez,” Gardner said.

Gardner explained that surgery is needed to “clean up a bit of scar tissue” around two previously damaged T4 and T5 vertebrae.

“The crash last year from Misano where Petrucci took out Domi and then Domi took me out on the first lap kind of set it off,” he said. “I had a bit of pain. I was like, 'I'll get over it after a few days like I usually do'. And it was like 2 months!

“I got over it and then I had a wakeboard crash, doing a backflip! So I hurt it again and it didn't get better after that. I went to get it checked at the end of last year, and the doctor said, ‘Yeah, you’ve got the back of a 45-year-old’.  

“So I've been basically putting it [surgery] off this year, just with a few injections in the back to help it. I was close to doing the surgery in that big break we had between Assen and Misano. 

"But I didn't want to risk it in the middle of the season. We were quite OK at that point in the season. I thought let's focus on riding and that's it.

“It's not a massive operation. They're just going to basically clean up a bit of the scar tissue. It's like calcified muscle around those two vertebrae. It's unstable and the disks are suffering for that. 

"But [afterwards] I’ve got to be a month at home basically with my feet up, which I'm not going to take very lightly. So let’s see if I behave myself!”

Gardner took his first WorldSBK podium early in his second season with GRT Yamaha but has since slipped back to tenth in the standings.

“We're having our own struggles at the moment in Superbikes,” Gardner said.

“We've had a tough last two rounds, all of us [at Yamaha]. So we need to find what we've lost and find the way forward again and try to close that gap that everybody has opened up.

“You have to take your hat off to the other manufacturers. They've really improved, even throughout the year. They've stepped up the game.

“We're not actually riding slower than last year, most of my races are like 10 seconds quicker than last year. I've improved as a rider, but unfortunately, we're not seeing that in the results.

“So if we can find the way to go forward again, make another step, it’s what we need at the moment.

“Hopefully we can get back to more of a decent position in Estoril, which I've never been to before. So that's going to be interesting. And obviously, finish on a high in Jerez.”

Estoril, the penultimate round of the 2024 WorldSBK season, takes place this weekend.