The Long Road Back for Supercross Star Trey Canard
ATLANTA, Ga. — For the first half of the 2013 Monster Energy Supercross season, Trey Canard was in an unfamiliar place.
The veteran Supercross star, who has been near the top of a sport that sends riders 65 feet over triple jumps every week, couldn't quite grasp his new place in his profession.
"I was scared," Canard told Bleacher Report.
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More than a year after Ryan Morais landed on Canard at Dodger Stadium, breaking Canard's back, causing damage to his spinal cord and forcing the factory Honda rider to undergo a three-level fusion of his T10, 11 and 12 vertebrae, he couldn't shake those cobwebs.
"After about five or six races, I thought that fear and anxiety that I was experiencing would go away after a few races that went well, but it really didn’t," he said. "I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get through it, which was one of those times where I had to look within and try to figure out if this is where I still needed to be."
The anxiety wasn't just his recovery from a traumatic back injury, it was the bad luck and devastating injuries that had followed Canard throughout his professional career.
When Canard turned pro at the age of 18 out of Elk City, Oklahoma, he was toting eight amateur titles and a ton of preseason hype.
He lived up to it.
In his first start in the Supercross Lites class—the "minor league" of the sport's two professional classes (now called the 250 class)—Canard led wire-to-wire at the Georgia Dome, setting the tone for a Lites East Coast title in his rookie season.
What happened before that season even began, though, was a sign of things to come.
He cracked his collarbone a month before his first professional season, which was the first of a string of serious injuries that reads more like Homer's Odyssey than an injury report.
| December | 2007 | Broken Collarbone |
| July | 2008 | Broken Femur |
| June | 2009 | Broken Wrist |
| April | 2011 | Broken Femur |
| December | 2011 | Broken Collarbone |
| January | 2012 | Broken Back |
| December | 2013 | Broken Wrist |
"Yeah, I thought about [giving it up], for sure," Canard said. "Especially right in the beginning. I never had the doubt that I wanted to do it again, but I wondered if it was possible. Any time you have spinal cord injuries, it’s scary."
The run of bad luck had Canard, who is a man of tremendous faith, questioning everything.
"Anytime we struggle physical pain, it’s one of the hardest things that we can go through," Canard said. "It affects our psyche and everything that we do on a day-to-day basis.
"When I broke my back, it was on top of three other injuries within about six months. You kinda do the 'why me' thing. You question everything you are and everything you believe. I think those are really good times, though. They’re not fun, but they’re good for us. Any time we have doubt, there’s always pursuit to find out whether it is true. For me, I always come out of those moments with my faith being built."
What Canard found out was that there was more to life than professional Supercross.
During his recovery from his broken back, he found joy in spending time with his 10-year-old brother—something he normally wouldn't have been able to do had he been crisscrossing the country on the 17-race season.
Instead, he went to the other side of the world.
Canard embarked on a mission trip to Tanzania during his recovery. It was a life-changing trip for Canard, who met his wife while halfway around the world. The mission not only was a chance to Canard to give back, but it put his injuries in the proper perspective.
"After going to Africa and seeing the problems over there, you quit saying, 'Why me,' " he said. "Here I am racing professional Supercross and getting paid a lot of money and do a lot of things, and others don’t get that."
He came back from Africa and back to the sport he loves with a vengeance.
Canard won his first 450 main event since 2011 this January, when he claimed the checkered flag at Round 4 in front of 47,671 fans at O.co Coliseum in Oakland. He followed it up with another win two weeks later at a sold-out Petco Park in San Diego.
His aggressive pass for the lead on Ken Roczen in San Diego (1:25 mark), when he jumped deep into a corner to take Roczen's line away and eventually make it stick two turns later, was a sign that Canard is not only back physically, but back mentally.
"It’s a comfort level," he said. "Anytime you’re off of your sport or profession for an entire year, whether you’re hurt or dealing with the mental aspect, you’re not going to be as willing to put it out there. This year, I’ve been really comfortable with the bike. My team has created such a great environment, and it has all led to some really good things."
The best could be yet to come.
Canard has finished on the podium (top three) in five of the last six races, and sits second in the points standings—45 points behind Ryan Dungey—with six races to go.
"I really feel that I’m here for a reason," Canard said in February.
If he keeps racking up top-three finishes, that reason could be a championship.
After all that he's gone through, it'd only be fitting.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on Sirius 93, XM 208. Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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