Richard Blaine wrote:
Rappstar wrote:
Sport is pretty lonely sometimes... even more so in a "high performance" environment. Tends to be a culture where "weakness" is something to hide away from the world. For a sport where concussions are certainly very possible - more or less depending on the discipline, I hope this starts to get more attention. Repeated blunt force trauma to the skull is certainly not an inherent part of cycling (unlike say football), but it's also not unheard of.
I get that. I realized that as well when I was thinking about this. My anger is twofold - first off, and most important, that the journos writing about this fail to point out the profound impact on mental health a (even single) concussion can have. And second that she rode for a pro team, and for USAC, and that both of these basically let her life spiral out of control. But I realize that there's only so much they can do.
Agree with you both. The blunt trauma from a bike crash (even 1x....forget about repeated) is enough to send a life out of control. Its an occupational hazard of all of us who use bikes. Compound that with the pressure of high performance sport and its a perfect storm of things than can mentally unravel quickly. It took me well past 5 years to get past the neural downside from my 2011 crash at IM Switzerland. But like others have good people around me (family, friends, etc).