What was your worst crash?

I've had a broken Fibula, been knocked out a couple times from landing on my head, stabbed in the gut by a lever, torn PCL, but the worst was one time when I didn't even hit the ground. One time back in 1983 I was racing at Ripley raceway in Ripley, WV. It was a staggered start with another class and I was in the second gate. The first gate went off, and then we followed. At about 1/4 the way through the 1st lap there was a big pileup and we caught up to them. I was near the front and didn't notice until too late the entire track was blocked. I tried braking hard but slid right into the guy at the end of the pile up. He was on a KX250 and had a side kickstand mounted on it. It went right through my boot, my foot and into the sole and stuck. After I slammed into him he started to take off and my foot was still attached to his bike and he began to drag me until it broke free. I remember him trying to go and looking back at me as I was yelling at him to stop, and he was like what the hell? I immediately rode right back to the trailer because I was in extreme pain. We had managed to pit right next to the ambulance, imagine that, and when I got back my dad was standing there and I stopped and got off and when i put my foot down on the ground blood squirted up like a oil gusher at least as high as me. Lots of pain. On the way out we had to go over and pick up the other dude who crashed, which was in the other 1st gate pileup. That was a hoot, riding across the track in the back of the ambulance bouncing along, so it got crowded back there. I still to this day have bits of leather in my foot, and my foot bones didn't heel right. Doctor said to just leave it in there rather than digging around trying to get it out.
 
Oh man, so many! As you guys know there is a price to pay for going fast. In the last 5 years, my worst... I don't even remember and the story is for the most part pretty funny...

At a private track, I was the only one on the track at the time. Everyone else taking a brake watching me ride. There was a couple spots they couldn't see from where they were. They were watching for 10 to 15 minuets, then another 10 to 15 minuets goes by and someone says "hey I haven't seen Adam in a while" They jump on the bikes to scan the track and find my bike in a yard sale position about 50 feet from me while I lay snoring in the middle of the track after the smallest jump on the track. All I know from that day and the next three days is what they tell me happened. I remember going to ride that day, then the next thing, calling my wife asking her why the eff she left me in the hospital, that was three days later.

The best we can figure is I high sided coming out of a right hand turn going up the face of a small jump. Only had a few broken ribs but the time lost is the funny part. Apparently while we were waiting on the ambulance I was yelling at god to fix my bike. Then when the ambulance got there I fought with the emt's for the entire time they were loading me, about me driving the ambulance to the hospital. Apparently, they said, "the only way I was going to the hospital was if I was driving". The next three days in the hospital was more of the same. They tell me my friends had me believing I had a black wife and 10 kids and my name was Shanequa! They must have had a great time with me!
 
adam63 said:
Oh man, so many! As you guys know there is a price to pay for going fast. In the last 5 years, my worst... I don't even remember and the story is for the most part pretty funny...

At a private track, I was the only one on the track at the time. Everyone else taking a brake watching me ride. There was a couple spots they couldn't see from where they were. They were watching for 10 to 15 minuets, then another 10 to 15 minuets goes by and someone says "hey I haven't seen Adam in a while" They jump on the bikes to scan the track and find my bike in a yard sale position about 50 feet from me while I lay snoring in the middle of the track after the smallest jump on the track. All I know from that day and the next three days is what they tell me happened. I remember going to ride that day, then the next thing, calling my wife asking her why the eff she left me in the hospital, that was three days later.

The best we can figure is I high sided coming out of a right hand turn going up the face of a small jump. Only had a few broken ribs but the time lost is the funny part. Apparently while we were waiting on the ambulance I was yelling at god to fix my bike. Then when the ambulance got there I fought with the emt's for the entire time they were loading me, about me driving the ambulance to the hospital. Apparently, they said, "the only way I was going to the hospital was if I was driving". The next three days in the hospital was more of the same. They tell me my friends had me believing I had a black wife and 10 kids and my name was Shanequa! They must have had a great time with me!
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That is hilarious.
 
I once got sand in my eye. Took me over 5 min to get it out. Thank GOD mom was there with a wet wash cloth. She is a life saver.
 
hit a kicker on the face of a big step down tabletop like the BC finishline jump. landed on the front wheel and went over the bars, bike mousetrapped me and crushed my back, kidneys and leg. broke a couple ribs and hurt the kidneys pretty bad. lucky for me the annoucer at the track was a freind and gave me some good pills to take the pain away. then i went to hooters with all my friends after the track and had the lovely hooters girls bringing me ice packs and cold ones for a few hours. had my dad pick me up and drive my truck from hooters to the ER to get xrays and everything checked out. peed blood for a few days and had to see a chiropractor and massage therapist for a few months to get my back straightened out.

dislocated my shoulder when my bike coughed trying to hop a big log. this was the first time it ever dislocated and i had my friend lift my arm back up and it popped back in the socket. sounded like a home run crack off the bat! I rode a few more hours and then it tightened up and i had to call it a day. dislocated it probably 30 more times before i finally had it fixed.
 
Hmmm let me count... yet I don't have enough fingers. Worst 3 was probably Spring Valley race it was a little sloppy jumped a tiny little step down and swapped out . Next thing I knew my leg was behind me broken tib fib. Outlaw on there down hill ski jump hit a rock at the top and kicked me forward and broke collar bone and wrist on the same side. My most recent but 3rd worst was probably Dirtworld this year jumped the front triple not sure what happened but was knocked out for 10 min and had what the doctor called a sprained spinal column and concussion luckyily that was it .. I believe I was very lucky with that one. Heck probably with all of them.
 
I'm too slow to wreck too hard, but at Spokes about 10 years ago 357 on a Suzuki (cant remember his name) was battling with Karnow going towards the back. He hit a jump harder than I had ever seen anyone hit a 6' mound and launched at least 25' in the air. In the middle of his flight he was peeled off his bike by the wires hanging from a telephone pole going across the track. Landed with one heck of a thud too!
 
flyin polack said:
I'm too slow to wreck too hard, but at Spokes about 10 years ago 357 on a Suzuki (cant remember his name) was battling with Karnow going towards the back. He hit a jump harder than I had ever seen anyone hit a 6' mound and launched at least 25' in the air. In the middle of his flight he was peeled off his bike by the wires hanging from a telephone pole going across the track. Landed with one heck of a thud too!
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David Hill
 
Vet261 said:
David Hill
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I witnessed that one. I always confuse David Hill with a local quad rider.....Tim Dettling. They are twins. Triplets if you count Ricky Carmicael.



@JO: A sling for a broken arm?
h6DDE9BA8



My worst crash:

Crute could tell you all about it. Happened at pymatuning holeshot raceway. Back in the day when the step up was a real man's jump. A step up. Not that poo-say tiddly table top it is today......Anyway......Crute hit that bastard every lap. I got a crumby start, went down on lap two and came up behind Stacy. I committed to the step up....and crute slams the binders on..and then decides to VEER hard left. "Oh Sshidt, I said....as I locked up the brakes on the face of that step up......and then I proceeded to speak paragraphs of obscenities at 15 years old (some words I said during that seemingly eternal air-time I probably couldn't repeat to this day they were so foul.)

I remember landing smack dead center on the steepest part of the landing grade. (Steepest going towards the sky and not towards the ground as we all like) The suspension compressed and blew through the entire stroke, and then that RM 125 (er RM 167--c'mon we all were cheating back then) turned from a beautifully tuned racing machine into a Factory pogo stick. Through the air I flew.......over the landing.......head first I remember, Arms straight out......watching that (oh so familiar) CONCRETE hard packed surface coming right at my head. ( THANK GOD FOR NECK BRACES. Oh wait, they weren't invented yet.....) Anyhow, my arms extended and my palms supine (like recieving the body of the Christ) I hit that concrete so hard my entire body felt like a Charlie horse (you know the quick futile leg punches you recieved as a child that hurt so bad you wanted to laugh) and everything went WHITE. Not black......WHITE.

My surroundings started to sparkle back in.....I saw about 17 people around the top of me......my chest and legs were floating miserably in the pond. My mother takes my helmet off and washes my face off with that nasty-ass pond water and it makes me gag. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING" I said.....and fearing for my life because I had said Hell to my mother of all people....I quickly said "mom, your charms look beautiful." (She had bought a charm necklace of #740 from Tony Gallo's sister who had a booth set up in the pits)

I refused a ride in the Ambulance and said I wanted to stay to watch the pro 20 lap race. And, of course, we did. After the finish...Matt Barnes won on a Kx 250 (2 stroke not one of those silly four stroke machines that weren't popular until the next season) So we went to the hospital, x rayed my collarbone.....and that is the story of how I got 6 screws and a plate into my right shoulder. Thanks Crute! BTW are we going snowboarding this weekend or what?!@?!?!@?
 
BriarcliffMx said:
I don't remember the worst one.....
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Ditto. Nor the heli ride and the two weeks after. Had quite a few that hurt since, but not one that ended me up in the hospital, 6 months off work, or a year plus to recover. Left knee, left thumb, nor my brain hasn't seemed to work well since, but I get by.... Thanks to the good folks, I probably get by much better than I could have. Doc from Ohio State told me that if they would have taken me to Grant instead of OSU, they might have amputated my leg. Sooo glad that didn't happen.
 
I have some hard crashes but really always seemed to walk away just fine...one race at Malvern, I was on a riders tail and followed him into a corner rut...he brake checked me, I hit his rear tire and over the bars...finished the race with no pain. Several hours later, I couldn't lift my arm up...for about 6 weeks I could not use my arm, the first couple weeks were intense...just about any upper body movement that involved my torso would kill my shoulder. I never did get it checked out but can pop it in and out at will...that's the worst injury I have had.

A funny one...was climbing a hill in the woods and didn't make it and was in a weird position. There was about 6-7 of us out riding a solid loop. Was trying to get turned around on the hill and slipped. I was holding the bike while standing to the side trying to maneuver it to go down the hill front wheel first...something gave way and I side-saddled the bike about 75 foot backwards to the bottom of the hill...ending up in a mess at the bottom...everyone pointed and laughed. Got back up and climbed it!

The worst crash I seen in person was at Malvern...it was about 6 or 7 years ago...the start of 250B with about 20-25 riders. They had made it to the section where you make a left hander going parallel to the road towards the table to table. Back then, their was a little, weird, table-top with a steep face, but not that tall. I was flagging on the face of the first table of the table to table jump. The riders were pretty packed together still and the guy in first place endos off this little table...As soon as he left the ramp, I knew he was in trouble. (This is my greatest moment as a flagmen in my eyes)...I leaped down into a full on sprint straight down the middle of the track head-on into this pack of riders with the flag in the air...watched this guy get run over atleast 3 times in the process. Race was red flagged and the guy was out cold, snoring away (which I now know was his tongue obstructing his airway.) He was put into the ambulance about 10-15 minutes after the crash, and he still hadn't woke up...I never did find out the outcome for him...since that crash, I try to follow through with people in hard crashes if I don't know what the outcome was. That was really scary to witness and protect him.
 
Too many bad crashes to count. one of the worst was in 2006 at Amherst when they had the table to table along the railroad tracks. tried it on my 85 came up short landed in the face of the table, broken tib fib and growth plate in my ankle. 6 months later go for a follow up appointment and found out my leg stopped growing where the growth plate was cracked. so then I had to get a cadaver bone/wedge thingy installed to level out my leg.

More recently, back in September at Malvern, I was coming up to the double into the rollers section, I was committed to tripling in and the rider in front of me hits the brakes at the last second, I hit him mid air, it slowed me down and came up short on the triple, crushed my t-12 vertebrae 50%. 2 rods and 8 screws installed.

And as many others on here, more than one concussion been knocked out once that I can recall
 
My worst crash was about a month ago. I was screwing around on my old Honda when - to my surprise, my brakes didn't work and I slid on ice and hit a tree. I was fine but my old honda wasn't.
 
First race at Malvern in 2013 dislocated hip over the step up before the finish line. Guy cut in front of me in the air, thats all i really remember. Had surgery to get it back into place and I couldnt get in or out of bed for a couple weeks without help.
 
Georgie, what year was that? I swear I was there. That jump took a lot of blood sweat and tears from riders. For me I managed to start jumping it before they pooooh saaaayyyed it down a bit. lol I started following Holtzer over the big double in the back that same year.
For me I've had two fairly big crashes. One there at Pyma and the other in Gennessee NY. The NY race was a mudder and after running the moto I raced my race got mudded up good. I was headed back to the pits and decided to grab the throttle side with my muddy left hand. (not good) for some reason I cracked the throttle with the lefty and that KX500 shot out from under me like a rocketship! After a bumpy ride to the Olean NY emergency room in the back of the ambo and seven hours in the ER they determined I had a heck of a bruise tail-bone. Luckily that was it. What a great ride home in the front seat of my dad's F150.
The second and probably most serious was out at Pyma coming over the step-down after the starting line. One season racing there I seemed to find a set and started jumping all these jumps that had been scaring the crap out of me for several years. Hit it several times then lap 4 lost traction and head over heeled it into flat part. I rolled, the bike rolled and ended up on top of me with a gouge from the foot-peg in the side of my helmet. Limped my bike and butt back to the pits. Later ran one more moto and didn't feel quite right. Went home only to end up in the ER due to having a minor heart attack and a concussion... One stent later and I was back at the track the next year.
 
My biggest crash and get off really resulted in no injuries. While I have had many crashes that resulted in broken wrists, separated and dislocated shoulder, surgery on thumb, broke foot, etc.......none were as hard of a get off as the one I had at Kenworthys in the mid 90s. Coming off the start, around the right hander (going the orginal way), I had a great start. Coming down the second straight headed toward the levy, the straight was rutted and had huge breaking bumps going into the bend up over the levy. I got cross rutted, swapped and off I went at high speed. Got hit by a couple guys behind me. Destroyed a helmet and chest protector. I hit the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of me. Not being able to grab a breathe is the worst feeling in the world. The paramedics finally got me breathing and everything checked out ok. But man, was that the hardest get off I ever had.
 
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