Troy Dog
The 2024 Monster Energy Supercross Championship is starting to hit its stride, but it has been without HBI Racing’s Caden Braswell.
The 2022 Nicky Hayden Horizon Award winner at Loretta Lynn’s hasn’t even posted on social media since he had surgery to repair his knees in December. In my eyes, two and a half months is TOO long not to hear from one of the friendliest riders in the pits. So, I called Brasfunky up this week to get an update on how he’s doing.
Apparently the problems with Braswell’s knee started in 2020 at Mini O’s when he was an amateur. He actually went in and got his knee fixed at that time. When he made the move to start preparing for supercross this past offseason, his knee didn’t take too kindly to that change. Braswell stated that he didn’t even crash, he just ended up tearing his meniscus and come to find out that his ACL had been gone. He thinks that he raced most of the season without it.
“At this rate I really want to get this thing right, so I don’t have to deal with it anymore,” Braswell said. “I don’t want to rush it. It was just one big long surgery, they had a pretty good game plan going in. We got into a pretty good doctor that does a lot of the NFL guys and he fixed me up right! He took my patella out of my right knee, fixed my ACL, and stitched up my meniscus.”
For the most part, Braswell’s recovery has been going pretty smoothly and he recently just started walking again.
“I had a good week there of pushing the pain pump,” Braswell said. “My leg was feeling pretty good and they had me in a wheelchair, then I spent about 4-5 weeks on crutches, and now I’m about 2-3 weeks into walking.”
For now, Braswell is back on a bicycle and going to physical therapy twice a week, plus exercises at home. His knee is starting to look normal again and he says his core is stronger than ever. He currently has no plans for a return quite yet. He’s going to heal the knee and when he returns it’ll be on a 450 in outdoors, he just doesn’t know if it’ll be at the beginning of the series or later.
As we finished up our conversation, Braswell said that he’s been busy setting up an online shop for merch to sell and to keep an eye out for that. Other than that, Braswell is playing the long game and making sure he’s completely healthy before returning to the races to get the best results for himself and the team.
Main Image: Courtesy of Braswell
