The Devil Inside
There is a demon lurking in the dark confines of our sport. Every so often he will make an unfortunate appearance. Striking out and getting his hooks into someone. What I am talking about is the amount of serious injuries and deaths that are starting to, I hate to say, become common in the sport of motocross. I am a frequent participant on many motocross message boards, it is now quite normal to see a request for prayers at least once a week. I always read the posts and try to remember the injured riders at prayer time every night with my young son. Well last week I had to unfortunately make a prayer request myself.
I got a phone call on a Friday night from a friend. He asked me if I had heard. "Heard what?" I asked. "Bob got hurt" he said. Hoping for the best I thought maybe he got banged up a little or something, but as my friend told me what he had heard I couldn't believe it. Helicopter ride, Intensive care, and broken pelvis were words that were burned into my memory. I scrambled to find my cell phone with several phone numbers that I couldn't remember etched in its memory. First I called Bob's house, of course no answer. I left a message, and then I thought, his cell, maybe it is with him. No luck, I called another riding buddy to let him know. I was in full panic mode.
The night wore on and after some digging around on the internet and a few more phone calls I was able to pretty much figure out what had happened. He was jumping a rhythm section that he had probably done hundreds of times without incident. This time he got bit, he came up a little short on the first jump and over the bars he went. Broken right wrist, left hand, pelvis and hip were the extent of his injuries. So with that info I laid in bed trying to get some sleep but sleep wasn't in the cards. I couldn't help thinking about what he was going through and hoping that he would be ok.
Let me tell a little bit about Bob. I met him about three years ago. We were both at a local track practicing one day. I saw him parked across the lot from me so I went over and we started talking. It turned out that we were practically neighbors, living within a mile or so of each other. We ended up becoming pretty good friends as we would often go riding and racing together, our wives got along and we both had young sons that played together.
Well I managed to get a little sleep and woke up Saturday thinking that would go to the hospital and pay him a visit. I called the hospital to get his room number and was shocked to find out that he was still in Intensive Care. "What the hell is going on here?" I thought. I still had not been able to get a hold of his wife so I was still going off of second hand info. All that I could do was pray, so that is pretty much what I did. What really bothered me was that earlier in the week we decided to rent the track that this happened at for a private riding session Saturday night. That was the last place that I wanted to go, but after calling a friend to try and back out I found that I was stuck. He just had enough people to rent it and I had to go. I reluctantly started loading up my trailer when the phone rang. It was his wife she pretty much confirmed everything that I already knew, but now at least I new what was going on.
I went to the track and did my riding, nothing special, just put in some laps, one of the few times that I actually didn't enjoy motocross. Fortunately we all made it through the night unscathed.
The next day was Sunday and I headed off to the hospital. I asked my wife to go with me because I was still pretty nervous. We got on the elevator and went up to his floor, as we approached his room my stomach was in knots. We went in and spent about an hour with him. He was in good spirits and already talking about riding again. Supercross was on TV and we watched it together. We said goodbye and I assured him that I will be back soon to visit again. He has a long road ahead of him, but I think that one day he will be back out there again roosting away.
Like I said before, I always read the other stories of injured riders and it always gets me thinking but for some reason it gets pushed to the back burner. I now realize that it doesn't really hit home until it happens to someone close to you. Bob and I raced the Plus 30C Class for the past few years together. We were kind of close to each other in skill until last year. Bob really stepped it up, he was riding all the time. His speed increased greatly and he was jumping stuff that we would never have dreamed of doing a few years earlier. I couldn't hang with him any more and it started bothering me. I enrolled in a motocross school and started trying harder to keep up with him.
One day after my second son was born I was holding both my boys on my lap and it hit me. These guys need me a lot more than I need to prove my ego by jumping big doubles or going blazing fast on a motocross track. That day I made a decision, I can still have fun at this sport and do it safely, if there is a jump that I don't fell comfortable doing, than I am not going to do it. I am now quite happy to finish in the back of the pack, if I got to do battle with a few guys great. My new goal is to have fun and come home just like I left. So far it has been working, no plastic trophy is worth any of my bones or my life.
Do tracks need to be safer? I think so, there is no need to have do or die doubles and triples on an amateur track. Leave the huge Stadium Whoops and rhythm sections to the Supercross pros. You can still have big jumps, just build them so that riders can work their way up to jumping them. A peaked take-off and landing afford no chance to safely try the jump. You need to go for it the first time and hope that you got it right. Remember I thought that we were doing this for fun, lying in a hospital bed is not fun to me. There are way too many paralyzed kids in this sport and too many foundations being set up for deceased riders. We must make this sport safer ourselves or someone in the government will do it for us.
Dennis Albrewczynski 3-28-05