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Antti Pyrhonen interview Date: 2010-02-09 17:00:30 | Author: Andreja Prel   The 31 year old rider from Finland, born 13 September 1978, is riding motocross already since he was six. In his career Antti has conquered several trophies, but his story of motocross has almost finished in September 2009 at the Red Bull FIM Motocross of Nations.   Antti, who is 3rd rider of the FIM MX3 World Championship 2009, was involved in the crash at the start of moto three and broke his left leg. Long recovering is still not finished, but Antti is decided to come back in the MX3. His success started in 2000, when he was competing in the MX1 GP for the first time and the same year he became also the European Champion.   Q: It’s been a long recovering, how do you feel now? A: My injury at the Red Bull FIM Motocross of Nations was really terrible. I broke two bones of my left leg, shinbone and thighbone and also heel. I was medically transported from Italy to Finland. I had four operations in six days, so it was tough. Anyway they were able to save my leg, what was even unsure at the beginning. Now I am at home in Finland since four long months. During the season I live in Belgium. We have a workshop there. Recovery was going well, I needed to take it very carefully and easy from the beginning. But from December I was able to go out to the gym and cycling at home. I finally left crutches 11th of January and that was great! Great to walk after 15 weeks!   Q: What were you thinking after the injury, were you strong all the time? A: No, after the injury I thought “this is it, this is the end of my career..., just on the last race of the perfect season”. From the moment when I was out of the hospital and when the worst pain was away, I had brighter thoughts. I love racing and I have been able to improve myself year by year. So why should I stop? I love motocross and this is my life! Now I am working hard. I am trying to come back step by step. Q: What are you doing now? A: I am training really hard with my physiotherapist, I am training cardio and in the gym. So for the moment things are running out well for me. After I was not able to do nothing for some months, it is physically difficult for me. But I feel great that I can do that again. I don’t know when I could start to practice with the bike. I hope soon, but I need to follow the program, which is the best for my injury. There is no way I can make the leg heal faster than I do now. In motocross you must be 100% fit. My dream is to start the MX3 season from the first race in Portugal, but we will see. It will be difficult.      Q: How will your team look like? A: The team project is also one of my occupations these days. We want to be ready for the season. This is very important for me because I want to build my own team, to be stronger and stronger. I want to improve many things and continue excellent work as we had been doing last year. This is important also for my future, when I will stop the racing career. This year we will have the second rider – Alejandro Noemi, 18 year old rider from Chile. He is also very motivated and we wish to do a great season together. It will be nice to practice together. For me this will be a special experience, to try to teach a younger rider. I think I can give him a lot with my experiences and I am looking forward to that. Specially now when there will be two MX3 races in South America. It is nice to have a local rider from there. I have great memories from Chile because there I won my first heat of the MX3 World Championship.   Q: Is it too soon to speak about your goals? A: My first goal after the perfect 2009 season was to fight for the MX3 World Title in the season 2010. Now after such a bad injury of course I can’t say what my goal is. It depends of when I will be able to practice with the bike and so on. However, goal of the team is to make our work as good as possible and to improve things step by step. We will continue with Honda bikes, the MX3 Manufacturer World Champion in 2009!