Former MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner was taken to the medical center after finishing third in the Dutch TT at Assen, where he apparently suffered a reoccurence of the illness that struck him in Barcelona.

The Australian skipped the press conference post-race and went straight for treatment after complaining of exhaustion when he climbed from his Ducati in parc ferme.

"We thought after Barcelona that we had got past it," a clearly pale and drained Stoner told the BBC after the race. "I was feeling alright during the week, Friday felt OK and then on Saturday I started struggling again.

"It was the same in the morning warm-up, I got tired after a couple of laps.

"I have taken every supplement I can to try and get my body up to scratch and working again. It's not my fitness, I know I have trained hard enough, this is something a bit strange so..."

Stoner led the race in the early stages before fading to third as he began to struggle with illness during the race.

"The bike was working pretty well again today, and in a way we were lucky that it was working well on a bad day [for me]," he said. "We will have to see at Laguna, I don't have a lot of break but we will see."