Active8 Yamalube Yamaha’s Beau Ralston will miss the remainder of the 2017 off-road racing season following a serious training accident last week in Queensland.

In preparation for Miva’s third and fourth rounds of the 2017 Yamaha Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC), the 23-year-old connected with a tree at high speeds resulting in multiple injuries.

“I was up at AJ’s [Roberts] doing some testing before the AORC,” Ralston told MotoOnline.com.au. “I hit a tree going pretty quick and I don’t remember exactly what happened because it was so quick, but I think my leg got twisted around the tree.

“I broke the bottom of my femur and the top of the tibia where they join at the knee, I also ruptured my ACL and lateral ligaments and a few other things in my knee. On top of that I also broke eight ribs and three of them are quite displaced. It’s frustrating because we had just sorted out a few little issues we had with the bike, it’s unreal at the moment.”

Due to the knee surgery procedure requiring healing of the fractures and movement of the knee joint, Ralston expects to sit out the remainder of the season before returning to the bike.

“I have to wait two months for the fractures to heal and get a bit of movement back in my knee, otherwise the doctors say my knee would never be 100 percent if they did the surgery now,” he explained. “So we’ll wait for the fractures to heal and then they will do the surgery on my ligaments and then it’ll be restarting the recovery and getting everything happening from there.

“It’s hard to say when I’ll be back at this point, if the surgery goes bad I guess anything is possible, but if it goes well I think I’ll be back 100 percent for the start of next year.”

This latest injury setback continues a run of bad luck for the racer from Kurri Kurri in New South Wales after returning from a 2016 ankle injury to contest just one AORC round this season before rejoining the injured list.