R450: First off, how’s the ankle doing?
Shane: It’s not completely healed. I would say that it is about 70 to 80%. I have a little bit of pain left in it now, but it isn’t too bad. I still don’t have a whole lot of motion. That should eventually get better though. I still limp a little bit now. Some days I limp a little and some days I limp a lot. It’s healing, but it is slow.

R450: What exactly did you do to your ankle?
Shane: Actually, I broke both leg bones and they went down and crushed the ankle. It also snapped the heel of my foot. They had to go in and put the heel back on and piece the ankle back together. Some of the smaller stuff they ended up having to take out. They fixed the leg bones and put in a metal plate.

R450: You were practicing when it happened weren’t you?
Shane: Yeah, me and Timmy (Tim Farr) were practicing at a track in Florida close to Daytona when it happened. There were some guys on dirt bikes there too. I was going over a big double with a dirt bike to the left of me and a rock hit my right hand. That knocked my hand off of the throttle and the bike started to flip. So I jumped off and landed on my feet. It was a hard impact and it snapped my leg bones.

R450: Was there an EMT or anything out there?
Shane: No, there was a paramedic that was there that just works there. He was right there when it happened. He came over and I stood up, but I couldn’t stand on my right leg at all and my left hurt really bad. I limped over and got in the mule and he took me to the car. Timmy loaded up the bikes. We were in Timmy’s renegade, but we had a car there. We just took the car to the hospital. I knew it was probably broken, but I had no idea of how bad it really was.

R450: Have you been able to get much practice in before this race?
Shane: Not really, I just walked outside one day and my foot was feeling okay. So I decided to go ride. I put my boots on, and it didn’t feel too bad in boots. Actually I had to cut the inside liner on my boots to get my foot in. I started out and rode around the field at the house and it didn’t feel too bad either. I rode around the track a little bit and decided that it felt good enough to race. That was about a week before the last race, so I started calling my sponsors and telling them that I needed stuff because I am going to race.

R450: Where are you from?
Shane: I’m from West Virginia. It’s a pretty simple location for all of the nationals except for California and Texas. Most races are 8 to 10 hours away at the most.

R450: Next year, are you going to do both the Motocross and TT again?
Shane: Yeah, if my ankle is better then I’m going to do both. I’m going to wait and see what it does, but if it is anywhere close to 100% then I’m riding Motocross. I like to ride it. Someone told me that there is going to be nine TT’s next year, so if they do, the two series are going to start conflicting. I don’t know what’s going to happen next year; I’ll just have to see. However, if my ankle is good, I’ll try to do it all.

R450: Do you do any of the stadium series?
Shane: I used to do it every year. I didn’t do it last year because with the other races, it was just so much running back and forth. I thought about doing it this year since I basically had the summer off. I thought about doing it and Glen Helen and hitting some of the outdoors next year and running the entire TT. That might help me figure out what I can and can't do.