Not a great report from our first day of racing, I'm afraid.
Kev hadn't ridden the bike at all before today so it was an early start to fuel up with high octane race fuel, go through scrutineering and then comply with a couple of changes to the regs since last season. Rider's briefing, a few final checks, tyre warmers off then out onto the track for practice.
Kev's times were improving every lap with a best of 1.30.6 which was still 4 seconds behind Jeremy McWilliams but placed him in the middle of the pack.
After the first five or six laps he would come past us on the pit straight hassling another rider and taking a look up the inside every time. Then we heard that the session had been red flagged. Most of the riders came back in pretty quickly then there was a long delay before a couple more riders came back. We walked down the pitlane to enquire of one of the marshals who confirmed that our bike and one other had had a coming together.
Best we go to the Medical Centre. On arrival there we were told that one ambulance had returned but the other one was still out on track. It seemed to be moving very slowly and creeping over any road irregularities.
Yes, this was the one bearing our Kev. A broken femur, fibula and tibia on the right leg was diagnosed and he was taken away to hospital in Winchester for further examination and surgery.
We retrieved the bike, which had surprisingly little damage, loaded everything up then set off for the hospital in Winchester where Kev had been taken by St Johns Ambulance.
X-Rays and further examination confirmed the original fears but complicated by the fact that the lower leg break was just below a pin from a similar break a few years ago and he was suffering some internal bleeding.
He was clearly in a lot of pain but remarkably cool in assessing what level of pain he was in and where and communicating this to the medical staff. Apparently this is exactly what he does when road testing and giving his feedback to other journalists.
At eight o'clock he was taken in to theatre and I set off for home. Have just received a text to say that he's still being operated on. Damned tough these racers but that's Kev's season over and probably ours unless we get another rider quickly and patch the bike up after it's fifth crash in seven meetings
If it wasn't for bad luck, we'd have no luck at all
Thanks to all the staff in Accident and Emergency in Winchester. Couldn't have been more professional, friendly, understanding and helpful
Steve
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