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Dani King "thought she was going to die" after training crash

Olympian calls for better road maintenance and spending on cycling infrastructure

Olympian Dani King says she thought she was going to die after the "freak crash" that put her in hospital with five broken ribs and a collapsed lung on November 6.

King also called on the Government to spend more on cycling infrastructure and repairing dangerous road surfaces like the pothole that caused her crash.

Writing in her column in The Times, King tells how the crash was caused by a hole that took down one of her riding companions on their regular Thursday training ride.

“We were doing about 50kmph (30mph) when the rider on my left hit a pothole and fell to the right, into the bunch. I went over the handlebars, but the impact that punctured my lung and caused ten fractures to my ribs actually came when the rider behind me rode into my back.”

King sat up in the road and found she couldn't breathe properly.

After an hour's wait for an ambulance, King was the last to be treated because other riders had head injuries.

“I had done 100 kilometres already, so I was tired and soaking wet, then I began shaking. I was in a lot of pain, really scared and I couldn’t cry because I couldn’t breathe properly so I just tried to keep calm.”

In order to get her on a spinal board and into the ambulance, paramedics had to give King morphine. Being moved into a flat position from being curled over in pain was excruciating.

“That was one of the worst things I have ever experienced,” she writes. “I could almost feel my ribs grinding together.”

“On the way to the hospital, I still couldn’t breathe properly. That was when I thought I was going to die. All I remember was looking up at the bright lights in the ambulance and trying to stay calm.

“And then I was worried because I couldn’t feel my feet. That turned out to be because I was so cold but I thought that even if I didn’t die, I might be paralysed.”

King was initially diagnosed with four broken ribs, and her punctured lung wasn't picked up until she underwent a CT scan.

“They quickly gave me an epidural and a lung drain before sending me to intensive care, where I spent two nights.”

King spent ten days in hospital, but was back on a bike before she left.

She writes: “It may sound mad, but a week after the crash, I was on a stationary bike again - wearing a chest drain. The hospital staff had brought me pedals, which looked like something from the 1950s but they put a smile on my face.

“The most frustrating thing had been not being allowed to exercise, so when the physio asked if I wanted to try and get on a bike, I said: 'Yes! Let’s go!'”

King won't be able to ride on the road for six weeks, to avoid the risk of further damage, and hopes to be training properly again by the beginning of January.

In a perfect world, though, there would have been no pothole for her training companion to hit.

“Potholes like the one that caused my accident can develop overnight but I wish more money was put towards repairing dangerous road surfaces,” she writes.

She also threw her weight behind calls for better cycling infrastructure. “British Cycling has called for £10 per head per year and that’s the kind of investment we need if we are to encourage more people to cycle on the roads. We lag so far behind countries like The Netherlands and Denmark.”

King is healing rapidly and is hoping for a 2015 better than her 2014, which started with injuries and ended in a crash.

She adds: “Hopefully I've used up my bad luck for a while now. Roll on 2015!”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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10 comments

Avatar
FlatericFan | 9 years ago
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Great to see you on the mend Danni, the state of our roads is embarassing to say the least

Heal Strong from another I Teamer

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hectorhtaylor | 9 years ago
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I don't know why local councils aren't sanctioned for neglecting roads. When a father can be criminalised for 'wilful exposure of a child to risk of significant harm' because he popped into a chemist's shop, surely a local council can be held accountable for allowing a situation to exist that could easily result in death.
Apparently the Highways Dept. drive around looking for damage, the very least they should do is immediately spray a wide white line around the pot holes to make them more visible and avoidable. They only spray them with yellow paint when they are getting round to filling them in - this is to ensure the repairers don't fill in too many, they are only allowed to fill the ones with yellow paint around them.
There is too much risk involved to ignore this problem - seeing a pot hole with one second to react means you could swerve into the path of a vehicle - you can't always go left and you can't always bunny-hop.

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Threeh | 9 years ago
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Easy politicise this, so instead – get well Dani!

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Saint Mark | 9 years ago
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Get well soon Dani.

"British Cycling has called for £10 per head per year"

I'd happily pay £10 a year for a pothole repair service. Someone should set that up.

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Airzound | 9 years ago
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She had to wait one hour for an ambulance! WTF were the ambulance service doing? Obviously not responding to emergency calls fast enough. She could have died.

I hope the injured cyclists sue the pants off the local authority and the Highways Agency.

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TheFatAndTheFurious | 9 years ago
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Did anyone report the pothole via the "Fill That Hole" app?

Just asking.... could still be there ready for the next one of us.

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Angeld | 9 years ago
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I kinda wish that people badly hurt would sue the pants off of local councils and then pay for the pot holes to be repaired themselves (as a type of therapy! ;P), it's probably the quickest way of getting them fixed!
Alright, the councils might start getting wise to this and fix the pot holes before people crash, but that's a win-win situation!

Wish you a safe and quick recovery Dani.

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Ginsterdrz | 9 years ago
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Welcome to the real UK in 2014: roads full of pot holes and an hours response time for a multiple victim serious accident.

Not the ambulance services fault, I know they're as starved of cash and staff as is every national service, but even Dani's plea won't change anything.

I'm sure there will be multiple meetings, reports and investigations by numerous tiers of management costing several thousand pounds to conclude the 'silly cyclists' were 'probably' to blame.

Another high powered meeting will spin, sorry, compile a 'factual' press release via public relations.

Apparently I'm a cynic though or realist, I can't remember  3

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bendertherobot | 9 years ago
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Needs to be forwarded to Welsh Health Minister (Mark Drakeford). Ambulance response times in Wales are shocking. This is scandalous.

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dotdash replied to bendertherobot | 9 years ago
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bendertherobot wrote:

Needs to be forwarded to Welsh Health Minister (Mark Drakeford). Ambulance response times in Wales are shocking. This is scandalous.

The ambulance arrived quickly but was dealing with people with head injuries first, depending on where people are they might only be one ambulance working. In this case it looks like it arrived quickly but had a lot of people to deal will.

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