Marc Marquez says risking injury by riding motocross bikes during the season is part and parcel of being a MotoGP rider.

Marquez was speaking in the wake of Valentino Rossi’s training accident, which left the nine-time world champion with a broken leg, ruling him out of this weekend’s race at Misano and effectively thwarting his chances of challenging for the title.

However, Repsol Honda rider Marquez says training regularly on motocross or enduro machines is crucial in terms of honing a rider’s skills.

“I hate when I read sometimes ‘why do I ride motorbikes [between races], it is dangerous’, but it is part of our job. Of course we would like to be on the beach and just relax, but there you cannot improve your skills and to improve you need to ride bikes and train at home,” Marquez said.

“Injury can happen anytime, but also you can get injured cooking, like Cal!” joked the reigning world champion, making reference to the knife wound suffered by Cal Crutchlow in the kitchen as he helped prepare a meal last week.

Marquez, who heads into the weekend nine points behind Andrea Dovizioso in the standings after an engine failure at Silverstone resulted in a DNF, admits that Rossi’s title chances are all but over following the incident.

“If he miss only this race, maybe he has some chance but two missed races – I think you miss too much points. Also the problem for him is that it is not only one rider, there are three or four riders – also Dani [Pedrosa] – and it is quite difficult to recover all that disadvantage and the most important for him is to recover in a good way and be strong again in the future.”

Misano has been a happy hunting ground for Marquez in the past and the Honda rider is confident he can make amends for his bad luck at Silverstone on Sunday.

“In Silverstone we did not finish in the best way but I felt really strong, really good – even in the race when I was behind them. Now we are in Misano and I will try to keep the same mentality, the same level, because it think we are in a good way.

“We did a test two weeks ago here, I felt really good and I was riding well, so we will try to understand the conditions this weekend in the race track and the grip, and try to improve session by session.

“Misano has been a good circuit in the past, very goo memories and good moments, and we will try to finish on Sunday in the best way to have other good memories.”

The weather outlook is uncertain this weekend at the Italian venue but Marquez says he is prepared to deal with any situation as he attempts to close the deficit to Ducati and Dovizioso on Sunday.

“It looks like it will be unstable and Silverstone was an amazing weekend, unusual to be in Silverstone [with favourable weather], but now it looks like here in Misano it will be tricky with the weather conditions but anyway we will try to adapt: we know that in dry or wet, normally our level is good, so just try to go out convinced that we can have a good MotoGP.”