Image: Octopi Media.

Max Anstie is currently hospitalized and has undergone surgery after experiencing a random lung collapse while riding last week, now on the road to recovery as he prepares for the 2021 season.

Following a series of scans due to the spontaneous pneumothorax, it was found he HEP Motorsports Suzuki rider had blebs on his lungs, which are small air blisters that he opted to have repaired.

“I had a spontaneous pneumothorax,” Anstie explained. “I was out riding last week, literally felt great, didn’t crash, didn’t do anything – no over-jumping or anything – got off the bike and was talking to my team about the bike and random stuff, then all of a sudden I felt like I was getting stabbed in my chest and back. Anyway, it ended up being that my lung collapsed randomly.

“The doctor then, they did a load of scans and said that I’ve got these air blisters on my lungs. They said it’s common in athletic males, so I was like, ‘okay, weird’. He said that as I’ve grown and trained, at a younger age, my chest has grown, stretching my lung and caused these blisters. I thought it would have been to do with that I punctured my lung last year, but apparently it was nothing to do with that.

“Once you have had one, you have a 70 percent chance of having another one. I would have been alright if I had just left it, but there was a 70 percent chance that I was going to have another random collapsed lung.

“The doctor said it was best that they fixed these blisters, so they went in with a tube or camera, sorted out these blisters and stapled something together. Hopefully now I shouldn’t get another one of these, especially on this left side.

“They are even on my right side, but he said I may go my whole life and never have an issue – it’s normally when you’re sat on the couch doing nothing. In a way, I can sit here and say it’s bad, but I’m in the off-season.

“This is the perfect time to have it done. I’d rather it happen now than going into the first round of Supercross or in Supercross. It was so random, I didn’t do anything wrong, but it should only be a couple of weeks and then I should be able to start riding again.”

Anstie went on to say that he will remain hospitalized until Wednesday, before being discharged and continuing his preparation for the 2021 Monster Energy Supercross season, which will begin in Houston, Texas, on Saturday, 16 January.