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This Dangerous Sport? by Jason Thomas

Injuries, pain, accidents; if you're a mountain biker it's guaranteed that sooner or later you will be the victim of one of them, as sure as day follows night. It's one of the occupational hazards of the sport, one that can not be avoided regardless of how careful you are, what speed you ride at or where you go. You could never take a risk at all and that slippy root on an easy corner will hook your back wheel up and send you unceremoniously tumbling into the undergrowth, your flailing limbs catching on hidden treasures such as rocks, tree stumps or disregarded household items that will have future archeologists speculating as to why there was a dwelling in the woods on top of a remote hill.

The question I am asked more than any other by non-bikers is "Why do you ride bikes if you keep crashing and hurting yourself?" and I suppose that it is a valid question. Why do we partake in a sport which whilst seeming healthy can actually be quite damaging? Of course, nobody gets on a bike thinking that they are going to hurt themselves, but we all know that the possibility is there, hanging over us all the time. It's something I have given a little thought to recently, especially as it is a question I have been asked on a regular basis since breaking my ankle and been incapacitated. My reply has always been along the lines of "It's fun" or "It's inevitable, so you may as well live with it and enjoy yourself", but what are the real reasons?

When it comes down to it, I don't enjoy pain and I really don't enjoy the endless weeks of inactivity and permanent discomfort spent recovering from injuries; unless you are some kind of deviant, I presume that everyone reading this would feel the same. On the other hand, I do enjoy the thrill of partaking in activities that I know can result in injuries; the feeling of riding an incredibly technical trail at speed, being on the edge of control and a gnat's chuff away from impending doom always brings a nervous grin to my beaming face. The feeling of getting to the end of a day of such riding and being unscathed is second to none, of knowing that on that steep chute you were sooo close to sliding off onto those jagged rocks but just managed to wrestle the bike back onto the right line. Even when it does go wrong and you end up a broken wreck, you still spend a good while post-ride analysing what went wrong, how you could have done it and how you will do it next time.

I know that I'm not alone in thinking this way. In the last year, the typical club ride has changed from the long distance slog into a quick blast from one technical area to the next, with more and more riders each time attempting technical riding that only a few months earlier they would have deemed impossible. This has resulted in the number of crashes increasing greatly but every ride, the number of people up for a go at the silly stuff seems to increase. Take for example the Wall of Death, well known to all Addiscombe Sunday ride regulars. When the rides first started to pass this slippy, steep sided hole in the ground, there would only be a couple of foolhardy people willing to give it a go and even then, that involved riding straight down the centre and out of the straight section at the bottom. Before long, people were attempting to ride round the curved sides and not long after, jumping in from the top to see how far down they could get. And with every progression of what was attempted, more people would be trying the level before. I think I am safe in saying that nearly everyone who has been to the Wall of Death has crashed, some lightly but some with quite horrific results (severe concussion, broken ribs). Each time an accident has occurred, there have been a large number of riders watching and it is guaranteed that either later that day or the next week, they'll be back there, doing the same thing.

Now it's time for a whinge. When it comes down to it, this is a dangerous sport that we do and injuries are an unfortunate side line to it. In the last year, I alone have given myself concussion, split my head open, injured my knee, cracked two ribs, broken my ankle, wrecked a finger, taken about a square yard of skin off myself and had enough bruises to scare a professional boxer. With every one of these injuries, I've been asked what happened and have heard every reply from "You're an idiot" to "Why do you do it" to "I bet you won't be doing that again". Now let's say that I played football on a Sunday, a game where a great deal of injuries also occur. If I had broken my ankle playing football, can you imagine that anybody out there would recommend that I gave it up as it was dangerous, or that anyone would tell me that I was an idiot? Can you imagine David Beckham down his local being told that he was stupid because he broke his foot? No, of course not, because football is classed as an established sport and the general population know all about it; it's instantly recognisable and everyone knows all about it (apart from the offside rule, of course). So when it comes down to it, the reason that mountain biking is seen as dangerous is because it is not properly understood, people who do not follow the sport/activity do not see the thousands of times that you do not get injured.

I think that I have the answer to stop all the daft comments. Next time you get back from a ride uninjured (which let's face it, is 99% of the time), go into your local, into the shop on the corner, into work, and tell people that you went out on your bike the day before and DIDN'T hurt yourself but instead feel great. Show them that you have no injuries. If you do this often enough, old Mrs Ratbag on the corner and all the other mockers of out wonderful sport may just realise that it isn't the psychotic, hell-bent on destruction activity that they perceive it to be.

Oh, and be careful out there ;o)