JC Rolls dirty. Photo: AP Photo/Laurent Ciprian
We don’t like to talk about crashing. Talking about crashing before you crash feels a lot like tempting fate and talking about it after you crashed feels a lot like a fisherman bragging about his catch. But crashing is the worst part of our sport apart from getting hit by a car, which has all the worst part of crashing give or take a few tons of metal and possible disembodiment or death.
Waking up the morning after a crash is a feeling that can only be understood by someone who has woken up the morning after a crash. The wounds will have kept you up much of the night, not being able to sleep on one side (or both), which is somehow always your favorite side to sleep on. The lack of movement overnight will mean that the wounds themselves are tight and sore, and the force of the impact will have the result that you know the precise location of every organ within your torso.
Men don’t like to act like they’ve been hurt, unless they’re in a long-term relationship, in which case they will pretend anything hurts so long as no one aside from their partner is around. Under these same circumstances, they are highly susceptible to debilitating cases of Man Flu which require loads of coddling, soup, and beer in order to cure. Outside these two extenuating circumstances, we jump up from any accident and pretend nothing happened, like Inspector Clouseau. Pro Cyclists epitomize that spirit to the maximum, frequently coming off at speed, removing loads of skin, and hopping back onto their bicycles as if nothing happened.
Geraint Thomas, possibly the most Rule Compliant rider in the modern Peloton, epitomized that today with his crash:
Barguil just wiped me out. It was a tight right and he just came around on the inside and knocked me straight off the road. I got back up and started chasing.
Which is also the same thing he did when he got blown off the road in Gent-Wevelgem. Except this time he head-butted a telephone pole and highsided into a ravine first. The race doctor apparently asked him his name to test him for a concussion and he answered with, “Chris Froome.”
JC Peraud came off alone a few days back, for no reason that anyone can articulate other than, “a touch of wheels”, which is what we say whenever we crash for no reason, even when riding alone. He came off at speed, on some of the roughest tarmac imaginable. He was skinned alive, effectively. And, as with Geraint, he got up and not only finished the stage, but rejoined the field. Double stud with a side of Steak Tartare.
And those examples are just from the last three days of racing. The last three days.
Crashing is part of life as a Cyclist. We risk life, limb, and skin. We fall off, we climb back on. Crashing is learned; we know how to fall to minimize “important” damage. “He didn’t crash right,” we say, as if there were a mysterious way to crash right.
We don’t talk about crashing because as a Cyclist, if follows us everywhere we go. It is always there behind us, like the shadow we feel on the backs of our necks when we come up the basement stairs.
Talking about it only makes it real, and crashing is already as real as it needs to be.
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Oh man hate that kind of crash the most, one second full gas, next second on your ass!
@frank
I have never had it! So stoked right now!
I think Mr. Cancellara deserves a mention here too, fracturing two of his vertebrae and then finishing another 50km of racing.
We'll impressed with G, and I think he'll have won a few hearts and minds in France with his comment about a nice Frenchman helped him out. I hope someone hands over his glasses.
I managed to get a text about crashing on the live text updates on BBC Sport yesterday. Fame at last.
*touch wood* I haven't had a crash in a while. Last one was losing the front wheel of my commuter on wet greasy concrete and sliding along for a little while. The impact was hard enough to bend one of my bar ends to 45 degrees (where it has stayed) but I didn't hurt myself.
One of the reasons for this was that I've learned to keep tight hold of the bars once the bike gets close to horizontal - during a similarly innocuous crash a few years ago I put my hand out, took the force of the crash on my shoulder and tore my labrum. And I don't like operations so I don't really want to do that again.
GT is fucking nails. We are not worthy.
Full respect to G after what I thought would be a hospital visit for sure.
I have been amazed at the resilience of the tdf pros this year and have felt their pain each and every time one falls.
I had an off in April on some wet diesel and ended up on my head and right shoulder at 20kph and it felt like I'd been hit by a train. After 15 minutes of recovery I walked up the diesel strewn hill and carefully got back on before gently riding home for the last 15km. I ended up in A&E that evening with concussion and a very stiff shoulder. My cycling gear was intact except for my helmet which was split in two, my skin in one piece but my confidence was way down. It took me two weeks to get back on and another couple of rides to get my mojo back.
So as I said above, respect is due to G and all the other pros who crash, brush it off, grimace through the pain and do their job.
@blackpooltower
The panic is over, his other half has found another pair.
Not only did Peraud finish the stage after crashing, while rejoining the peleton he stopped off at the team car and picked up some bidons for the rest of the team!
@chris
Ah that's a shame I was hoping he'd move to a pair of LeMond's skiing goggle Oakleys
It is amazing how hard they are. I had a crash about 3 weeks ago - doing 80kph coming down a steep descent, hit a rock, got a speed wobble, managed to only crash at 38kph (according to Garmin), fortunately onto a verge not tarmac. Broken helmet, bashed up shoulder, etc. I cycled home (half an hour or so) and didn't feel too bad. I think shock, adrenalin, etc helps a lot. But 3am the next morning - agonising. Has got better with physio, etc etc and its still not 100%. I cant imagine how the pros come out for some riding the next day after the big offs that they have.