Jul 10
2
Unfortunately I am starting this post from a hospital bed and it is going to be very short. I made it about 2 k into todays stage before I was blindsided by another rider. Many of the stages start with neutral starts to get the riders through the narrow roads that many of the towns are built around. This means there are cars and motorcycles in front of the riders trying to control the speed a little, unfortunately this means it can get a little congested in sections. Today’s start was particularly tricky as it was downhill and people were going to be spending a fair amount of time on their brakes. Our group was staying to the right side trying to stay out of the middle for safety as Jeorg had suggested. We were heading downhill at 40 – 45 about 2 k into the race when we came across a couple of riders that were for some reason going really slow and everyone was having to go around them. That’s about all I remember, Jeremy filled in the rest. Jer was riding behind me, with Tanya on his wheel. I guess the guy that was to Jer’s left didn’t see the slower riders in time and when he did notice he locked up his brakes, screamed by Jer and hit the rider to my left launching him between Jer and I. He then continued his trek to the right hand side of the road, unfortunately I was between him and the right side of the road and he felt I was no longer in need of my front wheel, so he proceeded to take it out from under me. I left the ground and pitched completely over to my left hand side firmly planting the back of my head into the tarmac. Luckily I was already moving towards the grass so that any subsequent bounces off the ground where a little softer, limiting most of the damage to the initial impact of head on pavement and the resulting concussion.
I still don’t remember most of this and I’m only just starting to remember the ambulance ride to the hospital. Once there, the Italian medical system was extremely efficient and had me triaged, CT scan, full x-rays for everything above the hips and an ultrasound to make sure I hadn’t damaged anything internally as I had some road rash and bruising on the lower back; all withing an hour. Try that in Canada.
After 2 days in the hospital, I am back with the group a little stiff, a little sore and with an incessant head ache I can’t seem to shake. Given what happened I think I got off lucky, but unfortunately my race is done. The doctors made sure the race organizers won’t let me continue and I’m not supposed to ride for a month. We’ll see.
