| This is my house, I live in Colchester, Connecticut. Lindsey had come here previously a few times to ride my pumptrack and so we chose this place for the jump because it was familiar. All the friends are comfortable here, everyone's been here, and we decided to build a huge jump and teach Lindsey how to jump her new bike, it was awesome!—Tim Cameron, Trail Builder |
| “To be honest, I didn’t know Lindsey super well at first. She was introduced to the crew by Wayne and we were riding together. When she had her accident it was devastating. It brought us as a crew so much closer together. At the hospital, I visited her a couple times at the Hospital and the boys were there every single chance they had. The person she has become out of this accident is amazing and so is the community that has been brought together”—Whitney Poulin, Friend |
| Lindsey's attitude from the very beginning and the positivity she had, not to say it's not hard and that there are not dark times, but, there is this overriding positive and wave of motivation in her that only seemed to get stronger and stronger—Mike Kirtley, Founder of Amateur Cooperative |
There seems to be more and more people getting injured, or is this just because the internet makes it easier to find out above these things?
I have had a few near misses and probably countless others where I was on the edge of getting badly hurt.
Do you guys think that modern bikes make it so easy to ride fast compared to say bikes 10years ago, that when things go wrong, they go wrong, the speed, height etc is so much higher, therefore injuries are worse?
It goes without saying that its amazing to see this girl has such a positive attitude.
Just found this with a bit of googling, a study in the late 90's...
www.mountainbike.co.nz/politics/articles/anstiss/chapter2.html#4
Need to find some comparative numbers from recent years.....
From a sheer injury volume perspective this is interesting
"Last year there were 825 claims for mountain biking injuries in the Rotorua district, costing more than $1.2 million. That's almost four times the number of claims five years ago, when just 214 were logged."
www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11747564
So is it 4x as many people in the forest, or 2x people on more capable bikes with less talent, or trails getting gnarlier... or...
www.acc.co.nz/about-us/statistics
So I selected "Back/Spine, Neck, Back Of Head Vertebrae", all causes, mountainbiking only, all of NZ. The number of new claims in YE June 2013 was 913, vs 1279 YE June 2017. Which given how much (anecdotally) Mountain Biking has increased in popularity doesn't sound like a massive hike in claims. However the total cost has doubled going from $2mil to $4mil.....
I think one thing we've gotta be careful of is pushing people into the most dangerous end of the sport too quickly, IE downhill.
I think the pro's and pinkbike should be better at promoting the use of adequate protection. Even if it's not the "cool" thing to do.
There are some other very interesting sports. For instance Horse Riding - that's nearly double the yearly cost of mountain biking and it's always my goto example when people hassle me about the danger of mountain biking. YE June 2017 was $7.3mil in payouts (as opposed to $4m for the same back/neck classification) You've got to think that horse riding is not even close to as popular as mountain biking (we think riding bikes is expensive...wait till you the costs for horses )
One way to look at it, MTB'ing total cost $15mm last year... Horse Riding $20mm. So Horse Riding has a higher proportion of back/neck claims than MTBing. Which isn't really surprising.
So that got me to thinking, has the %age difference of 'the serious parts' of your body changed. So I pulled out Head/Neck/Back as opposed to total claims. Over a 5 year period it's gone up slightly. Hard to read into it as I assume the cost is total ongoing cost (which would include the likes of compensation while people are on ACC).
MTBing
YE, $ Total, $ for serious bits, %age of total ongoing cost
2012, $7,005,486 ($2,379,982), 29%
2017, $15,540,188 ($4,973,456), 31%
Interesting stuff... would be worth a study on it.
There was an article floating around when the Christchurch bike park opened that caused a stir in NZ as the doctors likened riders coming in as the same as motor vehicle accidents :
---
"Emergency services doctor, Dominic Fleischer says the injuries coming from the park are serious.
"Those injuries we are seeing are those you would typically see from a high-speed motor crash, broken ribs, punctured lungs, to tear through your spleen a high velocity injury. They're fairly full impact injuries," he says.
www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/02/concerns-raised-over-injury-rate-at-new-christchurch-bike-park.html
----
As far as me personally I caution people getting into it "just take your time, build up, because when it goes pear shaped.." and then I show them the picture of my thigh hematoma I had last year...
For people that are new to the game: Bikes are far better than 10 years ago to the point it's almost not even the same sport - they are much, much easier to go fast on. They are also definitely safer, but since you feel fine doing 20kph vs say 10kph on a rigid steel hard tail, you just crash at a higher speed.
For people that have been riding for a while: Progression is pretty hectic nowadays, I remember the first Crankworx, where a backflip and a tail whip where cutting edge, now they are just a filler move for awkward jumps before Nicoli Cash roll tail whips something.
Same in Enduro, XC, DH ect ect the bar is being pushed up higher every day (which is great don't get me wrong) and it mostly shows in the Groms, like Goldstone, who are better riders than 99.99% of adults already.
Also Strava probably has a hand in it.
I've had full speed/send crashes where I should have ended up in hospital and gotten away with a scraped knee, and crashes in the car park that have put me out for weeks.
That said after my comments I'd done some further digging and saw the Concussion + Brain Injury category went from 85 to 143 (new claims) with active claims going from 104 to 196. That's a big yearly jump jump in that category. It could either be due to better awareness or more happening, or a combination of both...
That's not generally a category (I imagine ?) that has a high %age of 'twas an accident' categories - given you have to diagnose a concussion / brain injury...
My two cents: rider population has grown so more injuries are reported due to a higher volume of people. And the progression of the sport has skyrocketed so people are going bigger and badder each and every day and freak accidents happen to even the best riders.
I bet if you examined other action sports (moto, skiing, snowboarding) you’d probably see a rise in injuries in those as well. It’s the nature of this lovely beast we adrenaline chasers can’t get enough of!
For me personally, I sent something that was out of my skill level and happened to land so totally wrong. Oops! I thought if I can hit an 8 foot drop, why not a 10 or a 12 or a 15.... little too confident or self competitive haha.
So worth noting that I may live the best life given my situation but I would be absolutely nowhere without my friends, family (blood and dirt), and the MTB community! My dirt family not only rallied to build me the sickest jump but spent every day with me in the hospital when I was first injured. That was such a game changer and kept me from every letting myself see the negative side of what had happened. I can say with almost 110% certainty that I would not be the positive, happy as f*ck lady that I am today if I didn’t have the greatest friends and the best community/sport behind me.
I couldn’t thank the people involved in this weekend and edit more. They are he inspiring ones... I just like to send it ????
Also, the Ride for Fives event will be back this year. We don’t have a set date yet but it should be relatively close to the same as last year (we just have to coordinate with the race schedules around here so we don’t step on anybody’s toes or take away from their weekends!!)
It ain't what ya own that makes ya happy said the ol' gray mare to mah great grandpappy.