Four-time WMX world champion Courtney Duncan has been sidelined from the opening round of the 2025 Women’s Motocross World Championship WMX at Riola Sardo this week, forced to step away due to illness.
“The past eight weeks have been tough,” Duncan commented. “I was initially unable to do anything physically. Slowly, over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to do a little bit of low-intensity exercise, but I am struggling to get through that at the moment. You realise how important your health is, that’s for sure.”
“There’s nothing to say that it’s not curable and I will get back to 100 percent,” she explained. “The downfall is we don’t know how long that’s going to take. It’s all dependent on different people. It can take longer for some and shorter for others.”
“It’s the opposite of having an injury where you work harder and make sure you come back stronger and ready to go,” she said. “This one is unpredictable – you have to do less to get better. The more you do, the worse the symptoms get, which prolongs the recovery, and we’ve found that out over the last few weeks.”
“It’s pretty tough to accept,” she admitted. “We’re even struggling to get through a 30-minute session at the moment with low resistance. Reality shows that I wouldn’t even be able to get there.”
