It was after sitting down at the local coffee shop, watching the never ending stream of happy tourists that it occurred to me how damn lucky I am! After giving a local dog a quick pat temporarily distracted him from his never ending mission in search of food and a bit of loving I was thinking who can say they move to the most spectacular place on earth British Columbia in Canada for 5 months of the year to work, ride, hang out with friends and just love life. On top of that, be able to race in the biggest mountain bike festival in the world simply by stepping out my front door onto the mountains surrounding Whistler. Lakes, sun, pools, hot tubs, beers, friends, riding, racing and that’s just touching the surface of what makes up my days… Seriously what more could one want!

Crankworx was just over a month ago now; being probably the biggest mountain bike festival in the world it was made up of 2 weeks of riding, racing and parties. I raced the crit that was on day 1 of the festival, which involved racing for 20 minutes plus 5 laps around an 800m circuit marked out through the village by barricades. A group of four riders including myself and 4x world champion Brian Lopes lead the charge soon lapping the rest of the riders out, the battle came down to the line on the last lap where Brian Lopes brought home the win with Kevin Calhoun in second, Matt Ryan in third, and myself rounding out the top 4 riders. The crowds lined the whole circuit which made for an amazing race and an awesome atmosphere!

Two days after the crit was the Canadian Open Downhill, the track was made up of a mixture of steep rock faces, tight treed sections, and huge road-gapping airs combined with a fanatical mob on “Heckler’s Rock” making this one of the premiere downhill race events in the world. During a training run I hit the wrong line into a step down and nose cased the landing slamming my helmet into my handlebars leaving me temporarily stunned and blinded. I somehow was able to find my feet which has been blown out of the clips on my pedals and bounced down the hill finally coming to a screeching halt in the luscious green conveniently soft grass next to the track. Thankfully I was fine with only my pride hurt. Race day came and I got down the hill alive which is always a bonus. My race run wasn’t as I had hoped placing 48^th in the pro class, missing some key lines and just not riding like I should have been. Hopefully next year.

The Garbanzo Downhill was the next race on my agenda, starting way up in the stratosphere, where giant old-growth first wraps the forest floor with anaconda-thick root systems, whistling down forever over super steep slickrock, banging off drops and natural hits along the way before opening it up rocket style to the finish. 3,400 vertical of arm pumping, finger cramping, non-relenting downwardness. This race definitely suited me due to the amount of pedalling and physical body thrashing terrain it bellowed down. Unfortunately I hit my chain guide on a rock in the first single track breaking the chain pulley leaving my chain with no tension dangling from my bike which made it somewhat difficult pedalling, I made it down the hill crossing the line in 18^th pro class which I was stoked with considering the circumstances.

Injury! You may be asking; how can that possibly be taken for granted? Let me explain… I’ve been of the bike for 3 weeks now due to some back issues that resulted from a crash, it could be up to 4 weeks before I’m back on the bike 100% my Physio has told me. I don’t actually remember what happened but from those that saw me passed out under the chair lift it seems like I must have been riding along and lost my front wheel, slammed my back into a tree stump then ploughed into the ground knocking myself unconscious. I was out for about 10 minutes apparently and have lost all memory of the crash and the hour or so around it including being stretched off the hill strapped to a back board and being carted down the hill in an ambo to the hospital. I don’t even remember the lap that I was on before crashing. I find it quite amazing how the brain can erase memories like this, whether it is to block out the traumatizing experience or due to how severely I hit my head, I guess we will never know. For what it’s worth, I’d rather not really know what happened or know how much pain I was in. If anything the one thing I would like to know is what I did that caused me to crash in the first place…this is the one thing that I can learn from, other than that nothing is really that important. Although I now have 2 compressed vertebrae, muscle and ligament damage in my back, and gave myself a severe concussion I am just grateful I didn’t do any serious and permanent damage. I’m not going to deny it or pretend it wasn’t an option, but as the medics first thought when they got to me, I could have quite easily broken my back which would have meant at minimum months of doing nothing but lying on my back. On the contrary, thankfully I was walking (very slowly) the next day.

With what we do we know it’s not a question off whether you are going to crash but rather when! We don’t get on that chairlift day after day thinking we’re invincible, we can only do so much in preparation for these days. Anyone of us can hit the deck any day and you just never know when. I’m healthy, I’m walking and although I can’t ride yet which is frustrating I’m not going to let that stop me enjoying life in between