Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 28, 1995 TAG: 9504280013
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
What Tour DuPont racer Brett Dennis recalls from the 1994 Roanoke time trial has nothing to do with grueling uphills, beautiful mountain scenery or a lung-bursting sprint to the finish.
Instead, the 23-year-old Australian remembers the interior of a screaming ambulance, the layout of his Roanoke Memorial Hospital room, the fine doctors and nurses - and the pain.
The first rider of the staggered, 23-mile race, Dennis missed a sharp turn and flew into the woods off steep Mount Chestnut Road during a hell-bent, 41 mph descent.
He and his bike smashed into the brush at the bottom of a 15-foot drop. The accident left him with a broken hip and took him out of last year's Tour for good.
Seven weeks later, he was back on his bike. But to this day, he said, he feels a little weakness in his left leg.
"I'll definitely be taking it a little easier coming down that hill," he said from his Wilmington, Del., hotel room Tuesday night before the Tour's kickoff. "Definitely a lot easier, I'd say."
As any cycling competitor can tell you, wrecks are a fact of life. Most are simple spills from which a rider can quickly recover and get back into the race.
Some end a rider's racing for a day or a few weeks. Wrists and collarbones are the most frequent fractures in bicycle racing, Dennis noted.
"If you race enough, it's going to happen," said Mike Matzuk, a sometime road and mountain bike racer, who owns East Coasters Cycling and Fitness shops in Roanoke and Blacksburg.
Matzuk, who said the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks, added that most racing accidents aren't serious, but "you'd have to be extremely lucky to avoid them altogether."
The causes fall in three categories. Many, such as Dennis', are caused by rider error. Others occur when spectators get in the way. Equipment failures also can send a cyclist careening into the ground, often face first.
Some wrecks are the lone variety. Latvian cyclist Juris Silvos was knocked out of the Tour last year during its first stage when he ran over a photographer in Wilmington. Only he and the cameraman were injured.
Others are more frightening. Packs of riders may pile up when someone in the lead goes down. The result can be a bloody tangle of flesh and metal.
The 1994 Tour De France, the granddaddy of all cycling road races, finished its first stage with a bizarre pileup after a police officer trying to snap a photo stepped into the path of a group of madly dashing sprinters only 60 yards from the finish line.
Five racers hit the ground, most of them face first. One lost several teeth and broke his jaw. Another was knocked unconscious. A third broke a bone in his shoulder. All three ended up in the hospital, and two required surgery.
Although it doesn't happen frequently, competitors have been killed during European races. That hasn't happened in any pro races in the United States, probably because sanctioning organizations here insist that riders wear helmets.
Besides wearing helmets, there are other ways riders prepare for falls.
Because riders instinctively reach out with their arms to break their falls, the gloves they use to grip their handlebars have thick leather pads that save their palms from injury.
And the popular myth that racers shave their legs to cut down on wind resistance is a joke in the bicycle racing community.
Rather, hairless wounds are less prone to infection and heal more quickly than hairy ones. (The shaving also comes in handy during after-the-race leg massages that are so popular in the sport).
Dennis, whose left hip now carries two screws and a metal pin as a result of his Roanoke wreck last year, has suffered his share of accidents, but nothing like the one on Mount Chestnut Road.
He promises not to repeat that this year. But he also has precious little advice for the other racers trying to negotiate the winding mountain.
"I only got through the first couple curves," he said sheepishly. "I don't know what the rest of the descent looks like."
by CNB