Jorge Martin details his near-death crash in Qatar 'I called my girlfriend to say Goodbye'

Having started the 2025 season disastrously with his new team, Aprilia, Martin had spent the first part of the season in a hospital bed rather than on the race track. Two massive injuries in testing and then in his subsequent recovery training had left the 2024 World Champion sidelined until the fourth round of the season in Qatar.

However, rather than the beginning of a comeback, this race would mark an all-time low for Martin as he suffered one of the scariest crashes in recent memory - a crash which very nearly cost him his life.

During a recent episode of the Gypsy Tales Podcast, Martin sat down with host Jase Macalpine to discuss all manner of topics ranging from Jorge's early racing career, his love of supercross and motocross, as well as some of the hardships and turmoils he has had to endure as a MotoGP rider.

After breaking his right hand and left foot already in pre-season testing, Martin then suffered further fractures to his left hand in training, which included a fracture of the scaphoid bone - an often career-ending injury for motorcycle racers. On his return in Qatar, he then fell during the Sunday race and was hit from behind by VR46's Fabio Di Giannantonio, who had no time to react. The brutal injury was a major turning point for Martin, and he detailed the horrifying ordeal in it's entirety during the podcast:

"It was really difficult. Like, the year before I was winning in Qatar and we arrived there and I was 18th. I was like, no way, something is going wrong. After two laps I was destroyed, I couldn't do more than two laps on a good level. Anyway, I was almost into Q2, like I was 13th by 20 miliseconds from P12, so I was almost in Q2. I did the sprint, ten laps, I was destroyed. Then Sunday was like, Okay I will try to make it to the end. That's my target.

"So I just went to the race, did my best. At some point I said okay, I'm in the middle of nowhere, I will just slow down a bit and just relax. So I went wide, maybe lost a bit of concentration. I touched this long curve, and I was in the wrong moment, in the wrong place because Di Giannantonio was coming behind me and he... you know...

"He kicked me with his bike and, yeah, that was tough. I broke 14 ribs with a hemothorax, like I was bleeding from the lungs and yeah, I thought I was going to die. Absolutely.

"A lot of time it happens to us where we crash and cannot breathe. For sure it's tough, but you wait and then slowly it's coming back. But this was never coming back. I was like, what the hell is going on?

"At some point I could start to breathe, we went to the ambulance and to the medical center in the track, but there it was I was feeling off. Something inside me was like, I'm dying. Absolutely, I'm dying.

"So I called really quickly my Maria, my girlfriend, to say Goodbye. She came, she watched me and I just cried. I told her 'I love you' and 'I don't know if I'm gonna make it,' so yeah... it's huge.

"Anyway, after that, two minutes after that, the Doctor told me: 'Jorge, you are safe - we have to go really fast to the hospital, we have to put the tube into the lung, here we cannot do it, so let's go.'

"So at that point I was a bit more optimistic. Anyway, when I arrived to the hospital it wasn't easy. They just put my arm here, they cut, no anaesthesia, they just went, cut, put the tube and - pshhhhht. And then I could breathe."

Macalpine then asked Jorge if it was the first time he had endured such a near-death experience, to which the World Champion replied:

"Yeah, you know, I always had a lot of pain. It's crazy, but to really feel that close to leaving was so, so tough. I don't get the experience of like, I'm gone. I was always conscious, I was always there, but I felt that I was leaving this world for another one."

Earlier in the year, Martin also mentioned that The Bible had been a key factor in aiding his return from the near-death injury. Now, he sits 2nd in the 2026 World Championship and is largely considered the favourite to take the title home.