The factory Yamaha rider, who led the world championship until last weekend - when he made an ill-fated return from a shoulder injury sustained at Loket on July 29 - was due to start Sunday's season finale 14 points behind Suzuki's Steve Ramon. However, with his shoulder having not healed significantly since last weekend - when he was forced to pull out of race two at Donington Park - Coppins believes the demanding deep sand of Lierop offers no hope for him to overturn Ramon's advantage.

A CT scan of the Kiwi's shoulder revealed that the race at Donington did not aggravate the injury, but that the healing of the bone had not progressed any further. The only advice the doctor could give was to take rest and wait until the bone has healed completely.

Before Loket, Coppins led the championship by 107 points and looked comfortably on his way to his first world title.

"Obviously I'm very disappointed, more than that, it is difficult to explain in words how I feel right now," admitted Josh. "I have been putting so much effort into the pre-season and it all seemed to pay off with a huge lead prior to Loket. But in the end it proved not enough when you get hurt like I did, that's the hard reality of Motocross racing. I'm focusing already on next year and I absolutely want to grab the title then. I have proven to myself, my team and Yamaha that I can do it and they are 110% behind me."

"After winning six consecutive world championships [with Stefan Everts] we can accept to hand over the No. 1 plate. We know what it feels like to win championships, but not Josh," stated Yamaha Motocross Team owner Michele Rinaldi. "When you can dominate like he did in the first ten rounds, it is terrible to be sidelined and seeing your title prospect disappear. It does not feel right. However what remains positive is that we made the right decisions for 2007 and I´m convinced that Josh with Yamaha will again be the combination to beat in 2008."

"All of us here at Yamaha share the huge disappointment of Josh," added Yamaha Motor Europe racing division manager Laurens Klein Koerkamp. "We support his decision to pull out of the last GP as it is simply not realistic to expect him to even only close the gap in the deep sand of Lierop. Josh has worked so hard for it this year, I believe harder than anybody, and because of his preparation he dominated the first ten rounds of the championship. For all of us it was utterly frustrating to see his 107 points lead slowly diminish and not being able to do anything about it, just to hope he would recover in time."

Ramon will thus enter Sunday's final pair of races 38 points clear of team-mate Kevin Strijbos and 39 in front of rookie Sebastien Pourcel, with a maximum of 50 points still available.