September 26

Olympic venue belies mountain biking dangers

PHOTO: Oliver Beckingsale of Great Britain edges ahead of Roel Paulissen of Belgium.

U.S. mountain biker Travis Brown missed the 1996 Olympics with a broken collarbone, and he very nearly missed the 2000 Games with a fractured tibia. But such is the nature of mountain biking, a sport far more dangerous than the Olympic event that bears its name.

As in the case of whitewater kayaking, the Olympics have made mountain biking an event in which a trail is not blazed but rather navigated, over and around strategically positioned obstacles, as efficiently as possible. As such, injuries in the course of the Olympic event itself occur infrequently.

But outside the Olympic venue, mountain bikers as a group are thrill-seekers who wear their contusions as badges of honor and view each scar as a symbol, not of failure, but of a challenge that simply has not yet been mastered.

Researchers from Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California, where mountain biking has achieved something like cult status, found that 51% of 268 survey respondents said they had been injured in the past year while riding all-terrain bicycles. Most of the injuries reported (88%) occurred while riding off-road, although the severity of injury was greater when it occurred on a paved surface. Extremity injuries--abrasions, lacerations, contusions--occurred in 201 (90%) cyclists with 27 (12%) sustaining a fracture or dislocation. The results were published in the August 1993 issue of the Western Journal of Medicine.

A 1996 study from the Wellington School of Medicine in New Zealand looked specifically at forearm and wrist fractures in mountain bikers. Of 25 patients who completed questionnaires and whose radiographs were reviewed, nine had suffered fractures of the radial head, which was the most common fracture reported. Nine fractures occurred in the proximal third of the forearm; 16 fractures occurred in the distal third. None of the injuries required the patient to change jobs, but each lost an average of 28 days away from work. Eight patients had to make changes to their recreational activities. The findings appeared in the April 1996 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal.

Travis Brown did end up competing in Sydney, finishing an unimpressive 32nd, 14 minutes behind gold medalist Miguel Martinez of France. But given the risk of injury in this sport, combined with Brown's personal bad luck streak of sustaining injuries in Olympic years, he was lucky to have competed at all.

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