Racing against Monster Energy Supercross points’ leader Eli Tomac, Cooper Webb crashed on Lap 1 of Heat 1 in the Nashville round at Nissan Stadium and suffered an injury that required him to be transported to a local hospital for further evaluation. After losing traction with his front wheel, Webb was run over by Adam Cianciarulo, whose Kawasaki ran over Webb’s back and then made hard contact with his helmet. Webb was helped to the Alpinestars medical cart and was sitting up as they entered the tunnel.
“We were riding each other pretty aggressively there in Turn 2 and Turn 3,” Tomac told NBC Sports’ Will Christien. “In Turn 2, Cooper came up the inside and I tried to do the similar thing. We didn’t make contact, but then he washed his front end out and I happened to be looking back to see if he did fully hit the ground and I believe Adam clipped him. Obviously that is unfortunate. It changes a lot of things for us.”
Webb entered the round 11 points behind Tomac and still had a solid opportunity to close the gap with three rounds remaining. While Tomac attained his position with seven wins, Webb is in second with consistency. Webb earned nine podiums in the first 14 rounds and is the only rider to sweep the top five to this point in the season. That will come to an end as he was unable to line up for the main.
Webb was alert and standing before being transported to the hospital, but in obvious pain and devastated by the turn of events.
Team manager Ian Harrison issued a statement on Webb: “The team’s first concern is always for the rider. We are hoping everything will turn out okay, but of course after seeing the crash and Cooper getting transported to the hospital, we are devasted as a team.”
