Cycling: Crash course in survival

As Mark Langlands lay prone in a Carcassonne hospital bed, he thought to himself : "I'm a lucky man."

Even in the picturesque south of France, such a sunny perspective could not have been easy with a fractured neck, a fractured vertebra in the lower back, two compressed vertebrae in the thoracic region of the spine, a broken rib and a shattered collarbone.

There was a cycling career that would suffer from understatement if called promising possibly slipping away and a trip to the world junior champs that had been ripped from him.

Langlands, 18, might as well have been in a bed on the Mir space station given how far away he was from his parents, who were beside themselves with worry in Cambridge.

When his thoughts started to find some clarity through a fog of drugs, he knew he was lucky. Because, lying there, he was being relayed the news that Australian cyclist Amy Gillett, in an eerily similar incident just a few days later, had not been so lucky.

Langlands' crash occurred on Sunday, July 10, in the Pyrenees foothills, just outside BikeNZ's European training base in Limoux, France.

Langlands and his team-mates - Andrew Thompson, Clinton Avery, Thomas Hanover and Oliver Pierce - were in the mountains training for the world junior road champs, held recently in Austria.

The following are Langlands' words but not his thoughts. To this day he can't remember a thing about the accident but has been told in detail what happened.

"We were coming down a narrow descent, probably about two or three kilometres long," he said. "We came to this corner riding two abreast because we hadn't seen any traffic - you sort of lose the whole plot really and don't even think.

"Our whole team rode around the corner and saw a car coming up the hill.

Instinct took over and, for Langlands, it was instinct that let him down. Instead of going right, he went left.

"I hit the side of the car and put my hand through the passenger window and ripped it all up. I went over and broke four vertebrae, my collarbone and a rib."

The medicos wanted him airlifted from Limoux to Carcassonne, such were the extent of his injuries, but the tree-topped foothills made it impossible to get a helicopter in. An ambulance had to do.

He didn't know it but initial signs pointed to a fracture of his C2 vertebra, the piece of the spine that controls the head and neck movements. If this diagnosis proved correct it would've been a miracle if he ever walked again, let alone ride a bike.

Instead, of the cervical spine, it was only the C7 that had fractured.

"Had I snapped the C2 I would have been paralysed. I was pretty lucky."

Perhaps he is, after all.

The first thing he can remember about the incident was waking up on Tuesday night to see his team-mates - no one else had been injured although Thompson did hit the other side of the car - standing at the end of his bed.

"I didn't know where I was. They had to tell me everything."

Langlands was put into a back and neck brace and spent 10 days in bed before attempting to move. It was then he realised he was "pretty sore".

He returned home to Cambridge recently, business class, and is beginning to see the upsurge in interest in cycling in this country.

Most of that has been generated through the exploits of Sarah Ulmer. Langlands shares her coach, Brendon Cameron.

He came to road racing through BMX as a youngster, only switching from dirt to road when "a mate from Te Awamutu got a road bike".

While it would be nice to say the accident in Limoux was an isolated incident, he has what American cop shows would call 'previous'. During a training run in the Waitakere Ranges he smashed into a parked car while descending. His thigh was so badly beat up he was certain he'd broken his femur. He doesn't need any reminding of the dangers of the sport.

The news a learner driver had driven through a pack of Australian women cyclists in Germany, killing Gillett, was proof of that.

"I thought I was bad but when I heard about that it put it all in perspective and made me realise how lucky I was."

Spare a thought for BikeNZ's Australian high performance manager Mike Flynn, who was in Limoux and helped clean up the Langlands accident and was extremely close to many of the Aussie cyclists in the accident.

"You're out on the roads and there are guys driving past who don't know what the hell's going on," Langlands said .

Nevertheless, he doesn't expect any scarring of the sort that can't be seen outwardly.

"I can't see how there will be any psychological problem because I can't remember how anything happened."

Langlands has an appointment with a spine specialist in Auckland tomorrow. Rather than tell the specialist his long-term goal is, one, to compete at the Olympics in the road race and, two, be a division one team rider competing in the Tour de France, he'll speak of his immediate goal.

To be back on his bike, and racing at the national road championships in Palmerston North in October.

With a bit of his famed good luck, it will happen.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY