HeavyMetaLance
Well-Known Member
Today I saw the nastiest crash in a crit that I've ever seen, and it wasn't because of something that the riders in the race did.
It was the first race of the day (Cat 5's). My race (the cat 3/4s) was set to go second. I set up my trainer so that I could watch the race from just past the start/finish.
As the race came through the start finish of the fist lap, someone wandered on to the race course after only half the field made it through. As a matter of fact, he was one of the organizers. I think his name is Don. He's an older guy. If you were at Nittany, he was working the the registration table for a bit.
Then, SLAM!!!!
A rider collided right into him at 30 mph.
The sound. My God, the sound was awful. It wasn't the sound of carbon and aluminum scraping the ground. It was the sound of two bodies slamming into one another.
The crash was so sudden and violent that I didn't even see that it was because someone wandered onto the course.
What I thought happened was that the rider hit the curb and slammed into a pole or something. His 30 mph momentum came to a 100% halt that fast. I looked around, and there was no pole, or any other object that he could have hit.
Then I saw the other person laying on the ground. Both unconscious.
There were reports that one of them wasn't breathing, and they had to use a manual resuscitator. The bicyclist had to get medevaced out of there. The person who wandered on to the course went away in the ambulance.
It was bad. Extremely bad.
It really, really shook me. Pretty much everyone was shaken. For a second, I considered packing up my stuff and going home. A lot of people saw the entire thing, since it was right near the start/finish where most of the spectators were.
I ended up doing my race, and there were no incidents. I was shaking at the start of my race. I had to put that aside, because that kind of nervousness has no place in a road race.
Afterwards, I talked to some other riders in my race, and they said that they were shaking at the start too...
I'm not sure how true this is, but what people were saying is that the pace car didn't have a radio. The organizer tried to throw a radio into the window of the pace car as it passed, but missed the window. The radio laid in the middle of the road, so the organizer tried to get out there to clear it off so none of the riders hit it...
It was the first race of the day (Cat 5's). My race (the cat 3/4s) was set to go second. I set up my trainer so that I could watch the race from just past the start/finish.
As the race came through the start finish of the fist lap, someone wandered on to the race course after only half the field made it through. As a matter of fact, he was one of the organizers. I think his name is Don. He's an older guy. If you were at Nittany, he was working the the registration table for a bit.
Then, SLAM!!!!
A rider collided right into him at 30 mph.
The sound. My God, the sound was awful. It wasn't the sound of carbon and aluminum scraping the ground. It was the sound of two bodies slamming into one another.
The crash was so sudden and violent that I didn't even see that it was because someone wandered onto the course.
What I thought happened was that the rider hit the curb and slammed into a pole or something. His 30 mph momentum came to a 100% halt that fast. I looked around, and there was no pole, or any other object that he could have hit.
Then I saw the other person laying on the ground. Both unconscious.
There were reports that one of them wasn't breathing, and they had to use a manual resuscitator. The bicyclist had to get medevaced out of there. The person who wandered on to the course went away in the ambulance.
It was bad. Extremely bad.
It really, really shook me. Pretty much everyone was shaken. For a second, I considered packing up my stuff and going home. A lot of people saw the entire thing, since it was right near the start/finish where most of the spectators were.
I ended up doing my race, and there were no incidents. I was shaking at the start of my race. I had to put that aside, because that kind of nervousness has no place in a road race.
Afterwards, I talked to some other riders in my race, and they said that they were shaking at the start too...
I'm not sure how true this is, but what people were saying is that the pace car didn't have a radio. The organizer tried to throw a radio into the window of the pace car as it passed, but missed the window. The radio laid in the middle of the road, so the organizer tried to get out there to clear it off so none of the riders hit it...
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