Troy Herfoss
October 2021
Trevor Hedge: So eight weeks since your second major surgery on your hip, four months since the accident, light at the end of the tunnel starting to get a little brighter?
Troy Herfoss: “Shining very bright now, things are really good. I started walking Tuesday, without the crutches or anything and there’s no real pain. Little bit of pain by the end of the day, but that’s to be expected. Everything is really straight and also the hip and femur has a lot of blood flow and the hip replacement isn’t going to be necessary, which is the best news I’ve had. To be honest as a motorbike racer, with my leg 10 mm shorter, maybe I will fit the bike a bit better. (laughs)”
Trev: Despite your injuries, you’ve never been so highly sought after by so many superbike teams. One Ducati team has been really keen and made no secret of it, and I am sure the other Ducati Team would love to have you too, obviously Honda want you to stay, and a new Yamaha team being put together…
Herfoss: “It’s been an interesting few months really, obviously with Wayne retiring before I crashed, there’s a good chance that the way things were heading that I’d be the guy to beat for next year, and then once I crashed, I was sorta at the other end of the scale – wondering if I had a chance for a job next year. But the way it’s turned out it’s going to be as good as ever next year.”
Trev: How close are you to signing on the dotted line next year?
Herfoss: “I’m hoping in the next fortnight to announce what I’m going to be doing for next year. Â I’m just really excited now, there was a race over the weekend at Morgan Park, I was anxious to see how much faster everyone would go, but no one went faster so I was put at ease a little bit. I’m just excited to start the rebuild process now. I think I’ve got about four weeks until I can potentially get the OK to live life normally and get back on a motorbike and all that kind of stuff. So that’s all pretty exciting for me at the moment.”
Trev: So you’re walking unaided, without too much grief?
Herfoss: “By the end of the day I do have pain, I’m limping now – but when I get out of bed in the morning, I’m pretty much OK and from what one of the surgeons said I think I’ll just get better, with the more training load I get, as far as walking. I’ve been doing some gym stuff for a few weeks now and I can actually do push-ups now, which has been a big bonus. I couldn’t do anything at the start.
“There’s certain areas where I have really really terrible strength, so I am a long way off, but there’s some areas where I’m gaining strength really quickly. So in the next four weeks or so I will hopefully make fairly big inroads, a lot of the movement has come back in my arm, I can walk properly, I can get up and down without worrying about hurting myself, I can do more exercises.”
Trev: It all takes time realistically; you haven’t been able to do much for probably the first three months, with your upper body, so you’re really only a month back into it now. Another couple of months will be a big step forward. Can you get into the pool?
Herfoss: “I’m going to start the pool next week, just getting into and out of the pool on crutches was the main worry, I didn’t want to hurt myself again. But now I can walk unaided, I want to start attemping to swim and walking and running in the pool will be a good way to get my walking form back.
“That’s the thing, I’m so out of line at the moment, if I try and do something at the moment and my hips just twist. You go through life, not injured too much – I used to think on my bicycle I’d have imbalances and would think that one leg was weaker than the other, but it’s not till you have an injury that you realise how out of shape your body can get.”
Trev: So round about a month and you might be able to sling a leg over a bike, all going well.
Herfoss: “Yeah, now Tailem Bend has just been called off, if they go on to race at Phillip Island and it’s raining and it’s not physically demanding, who’s to say I can’t ride. Definitely at the moment I am thinking about next year. But if ASBK have to put off the championship till the weekend before Christmas and Im already a month back riding a supermoto bike, it’ll be hard not to get on a motorbike.”
Trev: The main drama there seems to be the guys up in Queensland actually being allowed out anywhere between now and 2032 or whenever, and then whether they will ever let you back in… so that’s probably the main stopper. And of course with so much of the grid in Queensland, that could be what makes or breaks the event actually happening.
Herfoss: “I think you’re right, but they’ll definitely open the borders for the Olympics in 2032…” *laughs*
Trev: If it was up to me, I’d just disband all the states and make it all one country, none of this us vs them bullshit.
Herfoss: “It seems very logical to do that.”
Trev: Logic and politics don’t go well together though… So now you’re getting back up to a training regimen, what’s your normal sort of day entail at the moment? Still Mr Mumming most of the time? How old is little Mia now?
Herfoss: “Eight months, just started crawling this week, ironically the day I got the OK for walking, she started crawling.
“Yeah I’m able to actually be the Mr Mum at the moment, so I can take on the chores inside the house as far as washing, wiping up and folding some washing, it’s actually reasonably good rehab to be fair. Literally when I got my surgeons appointment on Monday, he said ‘I guess you want to know when you can ride your bikes again,’ and I said no, I just want to know when I can mow the lawn and go to the tip. I’ve lowered the bar so much I just want to be able to do something.
“I guess for now, I get up in the morning and do a bit with Mia and stuff like that, and have a gym set-up inside so I just get in there and do some activation and stretching stuff, to try and build strength and movement. Then on the bike for 20 minutes, 20-30 minutes of really low power, on zwift, then a bit more gym and stretching stuff. I sort of do about two and half hours during the morning, by the time I stuff around, and then it’s just about trying to get moving and walk 500 metres a day at the moment.
“So I guess the surgeons biggest worry, as he knew I would push the upper end of what I could do, which is what I’m doing at the moment. But basically day by day at the moment and I’m not on any pain meds so I can just judge the pain by how I get it, and its working well at the moment. It works well that I haven’t had to commit to riding the bike this year, so I’m trying to get as fit as possible for next year.”
Trev: Were you off the pushbike long enough for your arse to get un-bike fit?
Herfoss: “I can tell you, because I’ve ridden for so long, when people used to say ‘I just started riding, I can’t get comfortable,’ I’d think surely it’s not that bad. But honestly because I can’t stand up on a bike now, I’ve got to sit down, 20 minutes the only thing that stops me getting off after the 20 minutes is that everything goes numb down there, and there’s so much pain in my sit bones, it’s crazy I couldn’t believe how much your body gets used to sitting down on a hard saddle.”
Trev: That’s the struggle I’m having now trying to get back on a mountain bike, and nowhere near getting on a pure road bicycle, my udder can’t cope!
Herfoss: “It’s the worst part.”
Trev: World Superbike, who’s your tip? Toprak to take the title or Jonny Rea?
Herfoss: “I think Toprak is going to take it, not just because he’s got such a big gap, I think mentally he hasn’t got him covered, I don’t think mentally Jonny can work out a way to beat him or crack him at the moment, but I think it’s possible he will work it out. I don’t think this is changing in the armour and that Rea is done, and that Toprak is the new guy on the bike, but I think a few things factor in and I don’t believe that Jonny’s entire package is quite as good as Toprak’s at the moment. I just think mainly he hasn’t worked out mentally how to crack him, so he’s throwing the kitchen sink at him, but Toprak is just so strong mentally and happy to give it back to him, so it’s going to be a hard one for Rea to come back from.”
Trev: And of course, with the parity in World Superbike, he is down a lot of revs on the Kawasaki due to the rules, so he’s definitely fighting with one hand behind his back there.
Herfoss: “Yeah, it’s a bummer as unfortunately these things only change when the rider starts losing a bit, it’s tough because Jonny has to sort of go through the tough times and get beaten before they’ll give him the revs back.”
Trev: And MotoGP, isn’t it incredibly to see how different a rider Marquez is on a left handed circuit rather than a right handed circuit, he looks like he always has going one way, but going the other way it’s just not working. I joined in on some zoom interviews at the end of some of the previous rounds where he answers questions that you don’t generally get to see on any televised coverage, and he was just saying, he just doesn’t have the strength to push the bar on that side, so he can’t push the bike hard enough, which is where he’s saying there’s that lack of strength. Obviously from your point of view, you’d study his form on the bike even closer than the likes of me, but what do you see when you watch him?
Herfoss: “I follow it religiously, and it was crazy to watch him roll out of pit lane in America, because he’s been riding pretty insecurely this year, looking for a tow a lot of the time, and not doing many consistent laps. But he just rolled out of pit lane and was fast straight away, doing his own laps, wasn’t looking for any help and it was crazy to see just how much more confident he was and goes to show how weak he must feel in certain scenarios.
“You can see that at Aragon, it’s crazy for him to follow for that long, and then when he made a pass, it was sort of he just set it in there knowing he wasn’t going to stop for the corner, which was unlike him. I think he’s got shoulder issues as well as arm, I don’t think the injury he and I have, is holding him back, I think he’s got so many shoulder injuries there, it’s been pulled apart so many times, it’s just not as good as it ever was. It’s definitely hard to watch when he’s struggling, knowing how good he is. I believe he’s the best if he’s 100 per cent fit.”
Trev: I agree totally, I think he’s in a different league when he’s on a mission, even well beyond Fabio, actually that’s another interesting segue. When Marc’s on it he’s always been that far ahread of the other Honda guys, week in week out, that’s ops normal, but this year all the riders other than Fabio on the Yamaha are nowhere, which is unusual. It’s Quartararo and then the next Yamaha is half the time 17th, so Yamaha really haven’t got anyone fast enough to help Fabio with set-up for the weekend, be that with leg work on the electronics or tyre wear, as he’s so much quicker than the other Yamaha riders they are basically racing in a different category. That must make life hard for him, to you know get to where he is now, he’s just been so consistent and he seems to make the best of whatever situation he is given.
Herfoss: “He definitely has been amazing this year, I had my doubts this year about Quartararo, but that ticked all the boxes for me, being such a difficult track for yamaha, and he’s been the only guy really, when the chips are down he’s come through with a decent result. I think that’s where all the riders on the top bikes are really Marquez-like on their best day, but the difference is that when Marquez is fit, his bad days he still races well, and I think that’s why we’ve seen Quartararo get ahead this year, because he’s been that sort of style where he’s really worked hard on his bad days to make sure they aren’t too bad.”
Trev: Marquez injuries were obviously quite horrific to that shoulder, I didn’t break bones like Marc but I did have all the tendons rettached in my shoulder 12 months ago, and they say it takes about a year to feel right. And it’s about a year to the day since I had my tendons done, and it’s only now where it really feels 95 per cent natural for most of the day. So, come beginning of next year Marquez should be in that same sort of area – unless it’s permanent nerve damage that’s really going to hold him back forever – we should see him back to full strength, or at least very close to it, next season.
Herfoss: “Would be nice to see him finish out his career in full fitness.”
Trev: He’s still so young, he’s 10 years younger than you.
Herfoss: “It’s crazy, and I don’t feel old I tell you that.”
Trev: Cheers for that chat and I look forward to letting the readers in on your plans for next year.
Herfoss: “Thanks Trev, talk soon.”
