Toby Price has undergone surgery to repair the damage sustained to his broken right scaphoid that was aggravated on his way to winning the 2019 Dakar Rally.

Price initially suffered the injury a month prior to the event and was hopeful he’d make it halfway through the 10-stage race, however the Australian overcame the odds and put in a heroic effort, earning his second-career Dakar victory.

Upon returning home to Queensland, Price immediately sought a medical evaluation with Dr Steve Andrews, and underwent a successful operation on Wednesday.

“They’ve fixed your fractured scaphoid five or six weeks ago, and it looks like it’s all gone back together reasonably well,” Dr Andrews explained to Price in a social media video. Unfortunately, the load of you riding in that timeframe has put a fair bit through the hold that that screw’s got in your scaphoid, and it’s started to collapse.

“It’s not healing and the distal end of the screw is starting to windscreen wiper and cause a big cavity in the distal pole of your scaphoid, so it’s not going to heal if we leave it there because it’s not well-fixed and it’s actually collapsing into the wrong position.

“What we’re going to do is take the screw out, put a new screw in through a different angle so that we can get some purchase on what bone is still there and good, and we’re going to pack some graft in from your hip to encourage it to heal and fill the hole in the distal part of your scaphoid so it can heal up.”

The Red Bull KTM Factory Racing ace is hopeful of plotting a title defence in the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship, however his sights are already firmly set on the 2020 Dakar Rally.

“As per usual it’s going to be a busy 2019,” Price told MotoOnline.com.au in a recent interview. “Hopefully we can back-up the world championship as well and the countdown to Dakar 2020 has already started – it never ends! It’ll be a busy year, but we’re looking forward to it and it will be a good time.”