The 2008 Red Bull X-Fighters champion Mat Rebeaud will make a sensational comeback in Moscow on Saturday night just a few months after being ruled out of the World Tour’s opening events following a crash.
TheSwiss star suffered a heavy smash in pre-season, breaking his arm and sustaining a punctured lung and was forced to miss the opening round of this year’s World Tour in Mexico City. But Rebeaud has been back in the saddle for some weeks now and will make his Tour comeback tonight.
“I’m feeling pretty all right,” he said in the run-up to tonight’s event. “Every day is getting better. I’m pretty happy how my arm is doing and it’s pretty cool that I can come back for Moscow. I don’t think I will be 100 per cent but I will do my best and try to ignore any pain I feel and really ride well.”
Rebeaud’s recovery was so rapid that he had contemplated riding out at the second tour stop in Egypt last month but in the end decided that Moscow would make a better location for his return to action.
'It’s better to go well prepared than to go to an event without practice and get a shitty result' – Mat Rebeaud
“I really wanted to come back for the round in Egypt but it was just too soon,” he admitted. “I had a meeting with my doctor in the week before the round at Giza to check if my arm was strong enough to ride there and after a long discussion we took the decision to not take the risk.
“It was pretty hard to say no, but in the end I think it was pretty smart as I would have competed there without any practice and maybe that would not have been the best thing. Now I have had a month to prepare for Moscow, which I think is better. It’s better to go well prepared than to go to an event without practice and get a shitty result.”
Mat has spent the time since his accident recuperating at home in Switzerland and made it back on to the bike mid-way through May.
“I’ve been back in Switzerland for a while,” he said. “It’s been pretty cool. The weather here has been pretty good and I’ve been able to practice a lot. I’ve just been staying with my parents and preparing myself for the Moscow competition. I started to ride in May and jumped a lot in the foam pit because the landing is softer and I really started to get all my tricks back."
“I went back on to dirt at the beginning of June and that gave me two weeks riding on dirt before going to Moscow,” he added. “It’s not the best preparation you can have but I’ll just do the best with what I have.”
And he’s itching to get back to the heat of the competition, having been forced to experience the first two round from his living room in front of the TV.
“It’s pretty hard to watch the events on the TV and not be there, especially with Mexico, when I was here watching on TV and not in the arena,” he said. “It was pretty hard to accept that but that’s the nature of this sport and sometimes you just don’t get to do all the things you want.”
And Rebeaud has been surprised with how the race for the Red Bull X-Fighters has shaped up so far.
“I was very surprised about the judging,” he confessed. “It’s a new system and it’s bound to take some time for everyone to get comfortable with but I’d watch a run and then see the result and it was totally not the result I expected!
“This year I was really expecting that Dany (Torres) would be the man to beat but he has had a problem with his arm like me. But I think Villa is in really good shape and Nate too. But it’s pretty hard to know because I wasn’t there. When you watch on TV you don’t know if it’s windy or how the conditions are. We’ll see…”
For now, though, it’s all about getting back into Red Bull X-Fighters competition in 2010. Rebeaud insists, however, that he’ll ride with just one aim in mind – to enjoy himself. “I’m not thinking about the result,” he said. “I just want to try my best and I’m hugely motivated to come back to the series. I think if I can ride well, that will be a win for me.
“It’s going to be good enough just getting Moscow. I’ve never been there and it’s really exciting to get the chance to ride there. It’s a great place for me to ride again. The place will be just crazy. I hope the crowd will good and help me forget about what happened and help me ride well.”
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