A dangerous game

By TMX Archives on 9th Feb 04

Motocross

INJURIES ARE a foregone conclusion in motocross and supercross - we've come to expect and accept them as an everyday part of the sport. INJURIES ARE a foregone conclusion in motocross and supercross - we've come to expect and accept them as an everyday part of the sport. Broken bones, blown-out knees and dislocated shoulders - these are simply the occupational hazards along the path of anyone who chooses to race a dirt bike.Spend enough time around the track and you'll even become desensitised or at least accustomed to the sight of teenagers in wheelchairs covered with moto-industry stickers. It's all a part of the dangerous game we choose to play.Certainly, much progress has been made in the area of protective gear and rider safety. Gone are the days of open-face helmets and t-shirts. Today we've got chest protectors, knee braces and neck supporters, all in the name of keeping our athletes - not to mention ourselves - as safe as possible. It's worked to a degree but of course it will never be foolproof.On a recent visit to the RacerX office the perpetually injured Travis Pastrana dropped off a copy of his latest DVD - Travis and the Nitro Circus. In it, Travis and his friends pull sketchy back-flips, shoot at riders with paintball guns and drive cars into trees at speed. One kid jumps from the bed of a moving pick-up truck - moving, as in about 65mph - off the side of a high bridge and into the river, narrowly avoiding the concrete support. Stupid? Yes! But he was back doing flips the next day. Not one of them was severely injured during the hundreds of stunts they pulled while making the video.Just recently at the Winter X Games, freestyler Brian Deegan attempted a 360 over a snow jump. Realising he wasn't going to bring it around in time, Deegan bailed at the apex of his jump and plummeted to the ground, breaking both wrists and shattering his femur. He was lucky it wasn't worse was the most common remark from those who witnessed it. So, yes, people do get hurt riding dirt bikes. But they aren't supposed to die.Jason Ciarletta was at his hometown race - the San Diego Supercross - trying to qualify for the evening programme. Like so many riders at the stadium that afternoon he was just a local pro with aspirations to the big time. He wasn't well known outside of the area but there was plenty of time for success to come his way.During the daytime qualifiers Ciarletta blasted off the gate during one of the heat races. Powering down the start straight into the first turn - a left-hander - Ciarletta and KTM rider Joaquim Rodrigues got a little too close and became entangled. As the two riders went off the track Ciarletta's #412 Yamaha hit the small outer berm and went into a slow-motion endo. According to witnesses, Ciarletta never even let go of the bars - he simply held on, landing head first on the stadium floor. Despite the best efforts of several trackside medical units Jason didn't make it. According to one member of the medical team, even if the crash had occurred inside a trauma center with immediate access to emergency surgeons nothing could have been done to save him. He never had a chance.For all the foolishness of the freestyle daredevils, the Pastrana crew and the like, they rarely suffer serious injuries. Most of Travis' injuries have come on the race track. And for all their highlight-reel ugliness, even the worst freestyle crashes rarely result in anything career-threatening - let alone life-threatening. Ciarletta fell victim to one of those motocross oddities, the low-speed crash.An area newspaper talked to the oft-injured Ryan Hughes after Ciarletta's accident. "In a high-speed accident you roll and bounce," said Hughes. "In some low-speed accidents you just stick like a dart. And in high-speed accidents you're usually thrown clear of the bike... I fell over in a corner once while barely moving forward and broke my leg... I fell and the bike landed on me. I got twisted up and snapped. It was all dead weight. And I've walked away from accidents that looked a lot worse because I just bounced across the ground from the speed. And at low speed, you tend to tense up because you know you are going to fall."It was the first time in the history of AMA supercross that a rider was killed during a race. In fact it had been nearly 30 years since a pro rider was killed at an AMA motocross. The last time was when Maico support rider Jim West lost his life at a Trans-AMA race at Saddleback Park in 1975. It's a remarkable amount of time, to be sure, given the sport's nature but in this situation there is little comfort to be found in numbers.During the opening ceremonies of this year's third Anaheim round - held one week after Ciarletta's tragic accident - all the riders and team personnel gathered in a large circle on the stadium floor. In the centre of the ring was Ciarletta's #412 Yamaha - clean and glimmering under the lights. It must have been an odd moment for the racers, paying their respects to a rider who lost his life in a race knowing that it could just as easily be their bike sitting there and their friends and family in the stands trying to cope with that boundless sense of loss that will never fully go away.According to those who knew him, Jason only ever wanted to be a motocrosser. That's generally the way it goes in this sport. It's as much a calling as it is a hobby or a career. It's in the blood. There's been a lot of talk, as one would expect, along those lines lately.It's often said that the most difficult part of life is figuring out who you are and what you want to be. The writer Joseph Campbell's favourite phrase was 'follow your bliss'. He believed that the only way to truly be fulfilled as a person was to find the thing that makes you happiest and do it for the rest of your life. If you really want to pay tribute to Jason, find out if you're following yours. He knew that bliss and he was only 19 years old.By Jeff Kocan, courtesy RacerX

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