Originally Posted by AndyL
Ian Hutchinson's leg injury is not so different to Kubica's arm. It was touch and go whether they would have to amputate the leg, and it took more than a year before he could race again (though after 9 months he did a parade lap round the TT course on a superbike, wearing leathers cut away to accommodate the external fixator that was still around his leg!). Then he re-broke it riding a dirt bike, endured further operations, but this year was back racing again.
Admittedly, a leg is not an arm. But we're not talking about a broken finger either either.
Thinking further back, Mick Doohan suffered an equally bad leg injury that would have led to amputation in normal circumstances - they had to temporarily graft it to his good leg to keep it alive - and returned within 2 months to try (unsuccessfully) to defend his championship lead, with the leg still visibly withered. And of course Barry Sheene had two horror crashes, about one of which he said "if I'd been a horse, they'd have shot me," and returned to racing in weeks or months both times.