‘Special Forces’ Star Carey Hart’s Injuries: Broken Bones, Spinal Surgeries & More

After competing as a professional motocross racer for more than 20 years, Carey Hart has been hit with his fair share of injuries. Although he’s been retired for 12 years, the athlete still has to get surgeries for complications from his past broken bones and more.

Hart previously said he accepted that getting injured was par for the course even before he became a pro racer at the age of 18. “By the time you make it to pro level in motocross or where you’re at the level where you are doing contests, you’ve already had a good share of injuries,” he told i80. “Very, very few riders make it to the pro level without a few major injuries along the way. It’s part of the job. It’s not about if, it’s when.”

Despite his body being completely banged up, Hart decided to compete on Season 3 of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, and admitted that “keeping [himself] in one piece” was his biggest struggle. Scroll down for everything we know about Hart’s injuries.

How many bones has Carey Hart broken?

“My body’s pretty destroyed. I’m in the high 80s for broken bones,” Hart told TooFab. The racer once shared that he broke both arms and both legs in his worst crash ever and revealed that it kept him off of his bike for two or three years. “I was in ICU for a month. It almost killed me,” he told Rolling Stone.

“I shattered one heel, broke a femur, broke both arms … just the intense pain,” he recalled to i80. “I’ve broken a lot of stuff. … You name it, I’ve broken it. When you’re lying there in the ICU with a bone sticking out, you think, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’ But, as the time passes and the bones heal, everything gets back to normal.”

Carey Hart’s surgeries

Hart has had a lot of surgeries over the years. “I just had my 22nd surgery on my knee,” he revealed in 2024. Pink‘s husband had a brutal injury to his right meniscus and has had to get it cleaned up more than once.

In 2022, the athlete had a procedure done to fuse his vertebrae. He only had to have one vertebrae fused at the time, but said he’d previously had “two fusions [and] two disc replacements,” while adding that there would be “many more to go.”

“I’ve had a few fusions and disc replacements in my back and neck,” Hart explained to TooFab. “And honestly, for the last 12 years since my first one, I’m not really supposed to run.” Of course, this was an issue on Special Forces. “I brought a full bag of tape and wraps and all kind of trickery to get my body through it all, and, you know, at a certain point you just got to kind of bite down and grin through it.”

While opening up about his spinal fusion in 2014, Hart explained to Rolling Stone, “The doctor thinks I compression-fractured my lower spine at least 10-12 times, so we had to go in and take care of it.” He said the recovery from that particular surgery was “brutal,” adding, “I was just off my feet, laying down flat for 22 hours a day, in excruciating pain, because they elongated my spine.”

 

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Hart also had a “lower spine disc replacement” in 2021. “Glad my fusion has some company with the M6 disc replacement,” he shared on Instagram. “Can’t wait to come back stronger than ever, and kick ass on my dirtbike in 2022.”

Carey Hart’s other injuries

All of the surgeries and broken bones have also led to infections. In early 2023, Hart revealed, “Found out a couple days before Christmas that I have an infection in some old hardware in my body. After stressing my brains out through the holidays, I got this tunneled catheter installed in my chest. Now for the next 41 days I have to inject antibiotics to knock this sucker out.”

He also admitted that dealing with this complication was more grueling than some of his past injuries. “I can handle a bone sticking out of my skin, but this catheter is definitely nervewracking,” Hart added.