BLACKBURN'S Carl Fogarty has suffered a setback in his recovery from his broken leg after the operation to reset it was not successful.

Fogarty is still in hospital in Wales after crashing during testing with the factory CCM team at Anglesey, preparing for the biggest supermoto race ever in Belgium next month.

Eye witnesses say he lost the front of his £5,000 CCM 640 and became tangled up with the bike as it cart-wheeled.

The four-times world Superbike champion fractured his tibia and fibula of his right foot.

Fogarty spent the weekend on painkillers at Bangor Hospital after the first operation, to manipulate the bones back into place under general anaesthetic, developed complications.

The leg continued to swell and doctors eventually cut the cast to allow the leg to expand.

There were then fears that too much pressure might be building up inside the leg until an injection proved otherwise.

However, the cutting of his original cast may have caused the knitting bones to separate and doctors again tried to manipulate the leg into the correct position last night.

Surgeons in Wales are in regular contact with Carl's specialist Professor Andy Carr and it is not yet out of the question that the leg will be pinned.

Wife Michaela has travelled to Wales - the accident happened in Anglesey - to be at Carl's bedside but had to return home briefly on Sunday afternoon for her father's 60th birthday party.

She said: "As you can imagine he is very grumpy at the moment. He is going to have to have a serious think about whether he rides bikes in the future.

"There are three schools of thought on how to treat this injury: manipulations, an external frame or by pinning it.

"But his specialist did not want to go into the leg because the last time he had a bad break in it, when he was 19, the leg developed an infection."

It was hoped that Carl may be fit to travel back to Blackburn this evening.