In the 450SX main event on Saturday night at Angel Stadium, SmarTop/MotoConcepts’ Mike Alessi hit a false neutral going over the triple. He cased the jump hard and collapsed off the side of his bike, and had to be attended to by the Alpinestars Medical Unit.
Alessi told Racer X’s Aaron Hansel after the race that he, “got the wind completely knocked out of me so bad that I pretty much blacked out.” Alessi confirmed that nothing was broken and that he hoped to return at Round 2 in San Diego.
“It was just kind of a freak thing. Going off the face of the triple I hit a weird false neutral and lost all drive on the face and cased it,” Alessi told us later in the pits. “I took the whole impact of the handlebars to my stomach. I got the wind completely knocked out of me so bad that I pretty much blacked out. I hit so hard. As I rolled down the backside of the triple I was checking my wrists, my ankles, and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m fine.’ Then as I rolled to that right-hander I just went down. Nothing’s broken and I should be back next week. It was just a gnarly impact to the abdominal area. It’s a good thing my core is in good shape.”
Yesterday on his Instagram page, Alessi posted a video of the crash and needless to say, he’s lucky to have not broken anything. He said is he is still really sore and as the “week progresses I will make a decision on racing this weekend in San Diego.”
