Copyright 2003, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

By David Swarts

Erion Honda’s Roger Lee Hayden will miss the next round of the AMA series, May 2-4 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, due to a broken scaphoid bone in his left hand. The youngest Hayden brother hopes to be back on his Supersport-class CBR600RR and Formula-Xtreme class CBR954RR for the AMA round at Road Atlanta May 16-18.

Hayden injured his left hand in a crash during practice for the AMA races at Daytona International Speedway and only found out it was broken following the Daytona event. Shortly before round two of the AMA National series April 4-6 at California Speedway, Dr. Arthur Ting performed an MRI on Hayden and discovered a crack in his left scaphoid bone, also known as the navicular.

Hayden, 19, wore a brace on his hand when he was not riding and a smaller brace while he was riding at California Speedway. Despite a great deal of pain, Hayden “sucked it up” and finished ninth in Supersport and sixth in Formula Xtreme at the physically-demanding, 21-turn Fontana, California infield road course.

In a regularly scheduled examination following the California Speedway event, Dr. Ting discovered that Hayden’s fracture had spread, calling for surgery to screw the bone back together. Hayden had surgery on April 8 and has spent the last two weeks rehabilitating his injury at his home in Owensboro, Kentucky.

“I’ve got more medical devices in my room than some hospitals,” Hayden said Monday. Hayden uses a bone stimulator 30 minutes each day and utilizes a cold water pressure wrap several times each day in order to expedite the healing of his scaphoid, a bone notoriously slow to heal due to a natural lack of blood circulation around the bone.

“All I can do is ride my road bike here in the house on a trainer,” said Hayden. “I can’t even play video games. It’s even put me behind in my MotoGP3 season on my PlayStation.”

After confirming that he will miss the Infineon Raceway round of the AMA series, Hayden said he hopes to be back in action at Atlanta. “I can’t miss Road Atlanta, but (Dr.) Ting said it’s going to bother me for a long time.”