injured from gate failure Options

[cjbmx/hex]

Hey gang!

Well by now most of our Oregon families have heard what happened to me last night. I wanted to post primarily as a reminder of how a starting gate can create severe injuries when not operating correctly. Forgive any mispelling or grammar mistakes as I type this with one finger and some pain meds.

I have always worried about the little tykes falling over right before a gate drops and getting pinched; never thought it would happen to me. Anyway most of us have seen gates fail to drop and a rack of riders go head over heals (but the gate remains up), that is what happened to josh buanualos, a couple others and I last night just before racing started. The difference was the gate decided to drop the second we hit the deck.

Unfortunately my left forearm was in the worst possible spot and took the full impact of the steel gate. Speculation is that somehow the electrical plug was jolted (by a flipping bike?) which caused the ram to cycle down/gate open.

Anyway no gory details, I went thru surgery last night to clean the compound punctures and reset the bones. Amazingly the breaks appear fairly clean and may not require any pins/plates. I go into a fracture specialist on Monday to get the final results.

I have had concussions, broken ribs and knee damage but this is by far the worst in over 30 years of bmx. That said I will be back on the gate when ready and hope all of you are still there.

Lastly to all of us that operate or maintain the gate systems , let’s make sure we take the appropriate steps to keep them operating correctly. Please do not take this comment as blame, just something we should take away from these types of accidents.

Thanks for all the well wishes and prayers!

Woo Hoo BMX! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/drinks.gif)

CJ

[Elvis]

Those Pro-Gates they can demonstrate, some quality of the ram, where you can actually put your foot in the way of a dropping gate and not get bit. It'll just stop at that point.

But yeah, gate wrecks suck for whatever reason. The big thing which worries me is when you see a kid fall on the gate and then grab the top of the gate -- and the cadence is going on! It's easy to do, but obviously won't end well, especially if the gate falls into a paved recess.