Bad Break For Buzianis on Day 4 of the PWA Fuerteventura Grand Slam

Micah Buzianis (still second) breaks his foot.
 
Martin Brandner reports:

Micah was in great form – after 3 days of racing and 8 eliminations completed he was in second with quite a big gap between him and Bjorn Dunkerbeck in 3rd position. Antoine Albeau started to feel Micah’s breath in his neck and began to make a few mistakes. So Micah had big plans for the last 2 remaining days of racing. In elimination 9 he made it into the final again and scored a 4th place which secured his 2 position further. In the semi final of elimination 10 Micah is leading at the first buoy starts his jibe but then he stops his turn and keeps going straight and sails straight downwind. He obviously is in great pain and hardly makes it back to the beach.
 
The JP team on the beach gets rather hectic. Micah comes back to the beach and tells us he has really bad pain in his lower leg and he heard something pop when he initiated his jibe. Despite the pain he wants to try and compete in the next elimination which starts within an hour. We have a physio therapist look at his leg, put and put it in ice, he gets an injection against the pain, his ankle gets taped up and off he goes for the next elimination. He is again in a good position at the first mark but it is again impossible for him to jibe and he comes back to the beach.
 
What happened?
 
We take him to the hospital to find out what is wrong and after 30 minutes we get the shocking news. His leg is broken (fibula) and probably was at least partly broken since he crashed with another rider ten days ago in Gran Canaria where he was hit by a fin right on top of his ankle where his foot is broken now. Back then he got 5 stitches  because he had a pretty bad cut – but otherwise he thought he was fine – even though the pain in his leg never really went away.
 
So Micah did 9 races with an at least partly broken leg and he was still in 2nd position at the end of yesterday even though he missed two eliminations. What an incredible performance of this unbelievable athlete.
 
Micah is back to the hospital right now to have an MRI done to see if there might be any other damage.
 
We wish Micah all the very best – may he recover as fast as possible.

Current JP riders’ rankings:
# 2 – Micah Buzianis, USA 34 (#3, #2, #2, #6, #7, #5, #4, #1, #4, #24, -)
#17 – Robby Swift, K 89 (#26, #19, #6, #16, #17, #21, #13, #13, # 20, #20, #20)
#26 – Enes Yilmazer, TUR 2  (#18, #20, #21, #26, #26, #26, #42, #23, #26, #30, #30)