America's World Cup plans hav🧔e been hit by the news that Sam Ermolenko has suffered a serious hand injury.

The Belle Vue rider is 🀅facing up to🅘 surgery in England this week after crashing heavily in an open meeting in Lonigo on Saturday. He was released from hospital in Italy in order to fly into Birmingham Airport to make the short journey back to his Staffordshire home.

Ermolenko had just begun to show his best form of the season after seemingly fully recovering from the bad back injury he sustained in the Grand Prix Chall💮enge meeting towards the end of the 2001 season.