Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

Yamaha’s Damon Buckmaster finished the 2003 AMA road racing season while afflicted with an inguinal, or scrotal, hernia that caused him a great deal of pain and left him weakened due to not being able to train.

“It’s just something that happens. There’s a weakness in the abdominal wall and the intestines push through. It’s pretty uncomfortable,” Buckmaster told Roadracingworld.com Monday at Daytona International Speedway during the annual Dunlop tire test. “Males are more prone to it because we tend to lift heavier things and that all contributes to it, but if you’re gonna get it, you’re probably gonna get it anyway, you know. It’s genetics.”

Buckmaster said he only told Yamaha Team Manager Tom Halverson and Graves Yamaha team owner Chuck Graves about his situation after it was discovered following the Mid-Ohio round in July. However, the 30-year-old Australian then took his first-ever AMA Supersport race win at the next AMA event, at Virginia International Raceway.

“The biggest area where it affected me was training; I couldn’t train,” said Buckmaster, adding that he hadn’t trained for a month before the VIR race. “That’s what I noticed more on the motorcycle. It wasn’t the fact that it was hurting so much, it was the fact that I lost fitness. It hurt me in that sense.”

Buckmaster had surgery to repair the hernia in early-October and said after one month he was back to full strength and his full training regimen.