Mat Hoffman and the LARS Ligament
According to this little story, Mat Hoffman had knee surgery wide awake in a motel and even helped drilling his own bone.. Sounds crazy, right? Let's have a deeper look at the LARS ligament. Among bike riders, torn ACLs are unfortunately pretty popular. It is well known that an ACL surgery will leave you off your bike for pretty much a whole year. I remeber before I had ACL surgery last year, I was looking around the internet for information about it and I came across This Article. The article is about BMX legend Dennis McCoy. It says that back in 2000, he flew to Montreal to have a special knee surgery (same as Mat Hoffman and Danny Way) that was unavailable in the USA. So, what's so crazy about the said surgery? Well, it seems like recovery time is around 1 WEEK! I thought I hit the jackpot when I saw this.. I mean, ACL Surgery, in Montreal, with 1 week of recovery time, really? But the article was already 15 years old.. I didn't find much information about it back then and I couldn't understand how you can be back riding in 1 week.. Since they use a synthetic ligament, you're good to go as soon as the swelling dissapears... According to their website which was last updated in 2013, about 100 000 LARS ligaments have been used around the world in the last 20 years. I have no clue about the state of LARS in 2015 nor am I too sure what to think about it, but it's definitely an interesting topic among action sports!
