In a dramatic end to Kev Coghlan's entry in the Schleiz round of the IDM Superbike championship. the Scottish rider had a serious accident resulting in severe back injuries.  The upshot was trackside treatment to stabilise his injuries followed by evacuation by helicopter to the regional hospital some 50 miles away, where specialists assessed the main injuries to be damage to 6 vertebrae.  

After a worrying 24 hours when a news blackout was maintained until more was known, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief with the news the spinal injuries were operable, and Kev successfully underwent an operation to stabilise his injuries earlier today. Early indications are that Kev will be hospitalised  for 7 to10 days, and will then have a period of recuperation.  

The Scot was even able to send out a tweet to fans from his hospital bed. In typical understatement he said:

"Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of news! So I had a bit of a biggie yesterday in the second IDM SuperBike race.  I've fractured 6 vertebrae, they have operated to fix one of them in place as it was quite unstable but everything looks ok now. Waitin checks."

Details of the cause of the crash are unclear at present, which happened going into a fast corner in the first sector of lap 2.  The outcome was an extremely high speed crash of the worst sort.

The unfortunate outcome came after the Scot had finishing 4th in Race 1 of the Superbike class, just missing out on a podium.  He had been confident of repeating or improving on this in Race 2 but it was not to be.

Updates on Kev's recuperation will be posted as and when we have them, in the meantime we wish Kev a speedy recovery.

"So finally, I have fractures in the T6, T7, T8, T9 and T11 vertebra. 

I have just been informed that I will have a second surgery tomorrow, it seems the T11 vertebra is really badly broken, they have operated today to put some screws and pins in place to keep it together with a bridge from the T10 and T12 vertebra but tomorrow I need another opperation to remove some small broken pieces of bone and replace them with an artificial bone part and fix this with another screw. They have told me that I should make a full recovery although it may take a few months. I have been really lucky that no damage has been done to the spinal cord so all feeling and movement in the legs is good.

Really big thanks to the IDM/ Shleiz medical staff, and my Team Yamaha MGM mechanic Axel Adiches who is also a paramedic and was by my side really helping me through the first hours after the crash.

I have seen a few comments about the Schleiz track being too dangerous and this being the reason for my injuries, I dont believe this is true and with the nature of the crash I can think of many World Championship tracks where I would have had the same outcome or worse. These things happen in racing.

The dangers of motorsport are huge, but they will never outweigh our love and passion for this fantastic sport!!"