NO GO in Austria

Arriving in Austria for the 4 day Alpentour Trophy, the team mood was a bit more relaxed. This was to be the last race on the spring calendar before heading home for a good training block in preparation for the World Cups in Canada and the World Championships.

I was in good shape, feeling ok after the 2 days travel from Madrid and looking forward to some long days in the Mountains to finish the racing block with a bang.

Our relaxed attitude had started to show in our riding, as had the fact that we had been cooked up in the car for 2 days. We were all riding excitably and it was really a matter of time before someone went ‘a’ over.

Nathan and I were out scouting a bit of the course on Thursday, the day before the race began when we got a bit off the beaten track. Before we knew it we were cutting through some steep forest, making our own tracks as we went. This was fun. We were finding lines and sections and suddenly the dense understorey of the thick pine forest opened out a bit as the hill dropped away, steeper again. It had been a nice 25-30degrees in steepness and we were having little trouble staying in control on the soft mossy surface. We now faced a section that would definitely have been approaching 45degrees in steepness.

In the mood, I was quick to identify that the section was ‘definitely rideable’ as we gazed at the land dropping away for a good 100m below us. Nathan was a bit hesitant, “Nah, dude… I don’t reckon hey. Probly best not t…” as I lifted my tripoding leg and clipped it in.

It would have been wise to at least scout a rough plan of action down between the stumps and fallen trees, but there was no need for me, I was happy with the ‘on the fly’ technique.

With my bum so far over the back of the saddle I was scraping the back tyre. I bombed straight down. In a matter of milliseconds my control and traction gave way to a no-traction, sketchy technique and I was going faster than I had really hoped for at the time.

I was now frantically looking for an out. I tried in vein to lay it over and slide down sideways but the roots, stumps and fallen logs kept getting in the way and by now I was flying.

The next part of the story has to be pieced together via the help of our only witness, Nathan who described it as the ‘worst crash I have ever seen!’. It’s not a good sign when your training mate doesn’t laugh as you hit the deck. There was no laughter.

It was a stump or a tree that brought the out of control express to demise and my one recollection is flying though the air as the ground disappeared 3 metres below. I had apparently clipped my bars, gone into an anti clockwise, rag doll, spin before threading the needle of two pines and collecting a tree with my right thigh at 3m from its base, going into a now clockwise spin/tumble. I managed my first touch down to glide down with my face, luckily that scraped a bit of speed off as I bounced back up and then landed on my back and eventually slid to a halt.

Instead of laughter there was a panicked “dude, are you alright man..oh?”. I had maintained consciousness for most of the journey so could happily reply with a “yeah..I think so” after a quick 4 limb test.

But, as a hauled myself up and started the 10 metre climb back up to my bike I realised that my right leg was non benne. I had badly corked my quad/side of thigh and could barely straighten my leg, let alone put weight on it.

We were now lost in the forest in Austria and I was one leg down. We decided the only way out was, in fact, down and battled our way down the slopes through the forest eventually popping out on the bike path where Haas pushed me back to our accom. It didn’t take a lot of inspection to see that I was not going to race day one. That inturn means I could not race day 2 or 3 so now I find myself hobbling around the house for a few days while everyone gets to go an smash awesome bergs and descents.. Fingers crossed I may be able to get out on Monday for the 75km marathon stage but currently things don’t look too good.

So on Tuesday we are back home for a stint of training before heading over to Canada for some pre-Worlds World Cup action.

A huge thanks to DiscoverTasmania.com MTB Team and all of the team sponsors for their support. Thanks To Neil Ross and Diana Dickenson for their hard work for the last couple of months. Thanks to my team mates for putting up with me. Thanks to my Family and Friends, Chris Clarke, Melb Uni Sport, Oakley, Castlemaine Cycles, Reynolds, You and I Ride and Torq.