Terror
Last night I had one of the scariest moments of my two years in racing.
I was sitting mid-pack, hammering through a prime lap in our Thursday night crit when I heard a woman scream and a bunch of riders yelling in front of me. I began looking for a down rider to avoid as the peloton began to bunch up and swerve this way and that. But as it turns out, it wasn’t a down rider that caused the commotion: it was a 3-year old child and mother standing in the middle of the road as 50 cyclists came barreling toward them.
I grabbed my brakes and swung wide hoping I could avoid the child, mother and other riders making their own desperate moves to escape disaster. No one went down. We all made it through a little frazzled but none the worse for wear.
As we got back to the business racing, all we could talk about was the near disaster and the look of terror on the poor kids face. There were so many ways this could have gone wrong, but didn’t. Soon we were sweeping back through the spot of near disaster. I could see mother and child of to the side watching the race. Her arm holding firmly wrapped around him holding him tight. He was smiling now, but all I could see was his face contorted in terror. Something I won’t soon forget.
Comments
Aug 22
Geoffrey
Was this a Seward Park race? I’ve often wondered if spectators have ever caused any crashes there since people seem to hang out in the road a lot.
Scary.
Aug 22
Kevin
Yep this was down at Seward. There have been some crazy things with pedestrians but never like this, they were just there in the middle of the road. Usually the squirrels and chickens are the ones causing the calamity.
Aug 22
Dave
That’s rough. It’s always the kids and the dogs, isn’t it? Last week at South Seatac a rider in the beginner’s race skidded and almost went down because of a loose dog on the course. And who could forget that dumb animal in last year’s Tour de France? That dog took a hit!
Glad you didn’t take a fall. There’s been enough of that. I can just picture that poor woman standing there,frozen in fear as a pack of cyclists comes out of nowhere like a herd of stampeding antelope. That must be quite a surprise when you think you’re out for a quiet walk in the park.