KEY POINTS:
A man has been told he will probably never walk again after being hit and left "like a rag doll" in the third serious accident at a speedway in a month.
Ben McLean, a 23-year-old yardsman from Gisborne, was due for an MRI scan this morning to determine the extent of the injuries suffered in the accident.
He has just a 10 per cent chance of walking again.
Before a packed speedway audience on Friday night, McLean fell from his perch on a sidecar bike at Meeanee Speedway in Napier and was then struck by a following bike.
McLean was in intensive care at Christchurch Hospital with a broken collarbone, broken arm and ribs, smashed elbow, massive bruising to his chest, a clot on his lung, and a compressed spinal cord caused by a piece of vertebrae popping out.
His wife of four months, Holly, is at his bedside, and the driver of the bike McLean had been racing on, Palmerston North man Mark Whye, flew to Christchurch yesterday to be with him at the hospital.
He said he was unsure how badly hurt his rider was.
"I'll see when I get down there."
Ben's mother Wendy McLean said the MRI scan would give doctors a better understanding of the extent of the damage.
"He's got no feeling from the ribs down at this stage. The worst-case scenario is he'll have the use of his arms. They told Holly there was probably a 10 per cent chance of him walking again." She said Whye was extremely upset about the accident.
A hospital spokesperson said McLean was "serious but stable".
McLean's father-in-law Dean Miller was the driver of the bike that came second in the race, and was just metres away when McLean was bounced from his sidecar and hit by the following bike, ridden by Napier man Dave Black.
The crash follows a horror month for Speedway New Zealand. Last Saturday, 13-year-old Blenheim boy Charlie Higgins was killed when a stockcar flipped over a safety fence and on March 18, Alexandra 20-year-old Luke McCrostie died after colliding with a competitor during a quad bike race in Cromwell.
Wendy McLean said her son had been racing for three years, and like any mother she worried whenever he took part in a race.
"After each race you say to yourself, 'that's another race over'. When you get to the last race of the night you relax a little.
"On those sidechairs they're not like the road bikes where they've actually got something they sit in. When they're swinging [riding in the sidecar] on the speedway ones they've got a little bit about three or four inches wide that their knee sits on and they hold on over the back of the seat. That's it. It is definitely pretty nerve-wracking."
McLean's mother-in-law, Sarah Symon, said it was not unusual for swingers, who use their weight to help the bikes gain traction, to fall.
"It was just one of those things, a freak accident. I've seen it so many times it's not funny ... "
McLean was riding for Whye as a ring-in.
Symon said: "[Whye and McLean] had won the race. They'd just gone across the start-finish line and round the bend when they hit a hole, and he just, like, fell off. One bike [Miller's] went one way and another [ridden by Black] ran over him. He went under the bike and came out the other side like a rag doll."
Symon said McLean was part of a "great team of boys" who always helped each other out if one was unavailable to race. The accident had shaken them all. Whye pulled out of a meet at Gisborne Speedway last night.
Wendy McLean said Holly had asked the family to attend the Gisborne race meet, where friends had planned to "hold a whip around" for Ben. Other riders - including top New Zealand riders Toby Lardelli and Mike Bond - wore ribbons as a mark of respect for McLean.
"Ben's a good mate," Bond said. "Our thoughts are with him and we're all hoping for a good recovery."
A fellow speedway competitor and Gisborne local, who did not want to be named, said the Meeanee track was not as safe for bikes as it used to be.
Clay had been added to the track and clumps often flew into the crowd during races, and it was harder to drive on than other surfaces. But the danger of sidecar racing added to the thrill. Speedway NZ chief stipendiary steward Jake Pulman said the organisation would investigate Friday's crash, and he was still reviewing footage of last Saturday's fatal accident in Blenheim.
"Charlie [the 13-year-old spectator who died] is something we hope never happens - but this week is a whole different perspective, where it's a competitor and there's a certain amount of risk anyway," Pulman said. "We try to minimise that risk."
