Image: Supplied.

A knee injury has ruled Nick Romano out of the complete 2023 AMA season, with the emerging Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing talent sustaining the devastating blow while training last week.

Romano, 17, was preparing for his maiden 250SX campaign when injured his knee, suffering damage to his ACL and meniscus.

“I’m going to be out for the whole year, as much as that sucks to say, I’m going to be missing all of Supercross and probably all of outdoors,” Romano shared. “I don’t really have many words, I ended up blowing out my knee, my ACL and meniscus, last week during training, and like I said I don’t really have many words.

“Off-season was going great, I was really making a lot of progress with my team and the bike and just everything on Supercross, and I felt amazing – fitness felt good, riding was good.

Despite the recent major knee injury, Romano was initially set to miss Houston’s opening round of the 250SX East championship due to a grade three separation in his shoulder at the start of the year.

“January 3 I ended up having a grade three separation in my shoulder, so that’s what technically put me out for Houston last weekend,” Romano added. “Then a couple of doctors said four to six weeks, which I was like dam, I’m going to miss a little bit of racing. So anyways, I didn’t need surgery, did physical therapy every day and got my shoulder really good and strong to ride.

“Three weeks exactly, 21 days later I was on a bike, felt strong, felt good, didn’t lose that much speed or fitness. That was a couple of weeks ago, then had four or five days on the bike and just there in training I blew out my knee.

“It happened after a turn, into a jump, I stood up and went to put my leg into the footpeg and it kind of buckled. It was my right leg so I hooked my foot under the pedal, just so I could hit the jump, and felt it pop again. As it popped the second time, I just felt my knee kind of expand and I guess you can say that’s when it tore.”

Romano will undergo surgery to repair the damage to his knee and will then begin the extensive recovery process, determined to come back stronger but miss the complete 2023 Monster Energy Supercross and Pro Motocross championships.