Strobel to return to racing next month

Washington State's Luke Strobel (Team Maxxis) plans to make his return to international racing at the UCI World Cup at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, in late July, after breaking his hand at the Sea Otter Classic earlier this year. In a relatively straightforward collision with a stray hay bale that'd found its way onto the course, Luke broke his scaphoid clean in half, an injury that wasn't diagnosed until some time later.

"I saw the doctor in Monterey (California) and was told that it was probably not broken but that these things can usually take a week to show up. It wasn't super painful and in fact I was back at home after the Otter doing timed runs on my local tracks, before I got the x-ray. That showed the complete break, so I opted for surgery on May 5 and have been in a hard cast since then".

Strobel has maintained fitness by riding his road bike daily and expects to get the cast off June 13. His next step is cross country training around his 22nd birthday on June 24, and then nearly a month of preparing for a return to World Cup racing.

"This has been so frustrating as I had my goals pretty much wiped clean by a simple crash. I've been staying fit, using a bone stimulator device to facilitate the recovery, and I really hope to do the final four rounds of World Cup in Canada, Australia and Austria. Missing the worlds sucks pretty bad, but my main thing right now is to be smart about this injury and recovery 100%."