After three operations allowed him to return to action for the 2021 campaign, it became clear that his arm still wasn’t right and he was being severely limited on the bike.
Something that prompted thoughts of retirement – as an emotional Marquez lays bare in Amazon’s docuseries Marc Marquez: All In, which release on 20 February – he underwent a fourth operation last summer to have his right humerus rotated over 30 degrees back to its original position.
The person in charge of preventing Marquez from hanging up his overalls at the age of 29 was Doctor Joaquin Sanchez-Sotelo, a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, with whom Motorsport.com’s Spanish language sister website had the opportunity to chat this week.
Marc Marquez has undergone four major operations on his arm since breaking it in 2020
Photo by: Repsol Media
Motorsport.com: How did Marquez’s approach to you for the surgery come about?
Dr Joaquin Sanchez-Sotelo: “Marc had needed three previous surgeries in Spain. Two in Barcelona and one in Madrid. The last one was performed by Dr. Samuel Antuna, who is well known both in Europe and in the United States. He called me and told me that, in spite of having resolved the infection [which Marquez suffered following his second operation and necessitated his third], Marc had mobility problems, basically external.
“In the first instance I advised him to give himself a few more months of margin, to try to improve as much as he could. After that time, he told me that he still couldn’t control the bike when cornering, and that he also had problems when braking. He couldn’t lock his arm, it was going inwards. Marc sent me a CAT scan of both arms. Thanks to 3D printing, we reproduced his two humeri in plastic; the left one and the injured one, which had considerable rotation. We had a video call, I showed him the bones and he said, ‘I’m having surgery.'”
Q: Why did you have to travel all the way to the United States?
JSS: “In orthopaedic matters, as the complexity of the surgery increases, it is important to find someone who has a lot of experience in that particular field. What is unique about the Mayo Clinic is the specialisation. I do just shoulder and elbow, and I do a lot of that. But it’s also that I have a lot of devices and resources at my disposal that are hard to get elsewhere. The 3D printing department is spectacular. I sit down with an engineer and we plan and project the procedure on a computer, print cut lines and so…
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