Hospital anyone? - The medical Gallery - not always a pretty sight, but this shows some of the real side of racing and riding - bruises and all....click on thumbnails to enlarge any image if you've got a strong stomach! If you have any pictures you can contribute, please get in touch...we offer a pair of screen name stickers in return for a good story and a gruesome picture or two!

My race injuries

This was the result of a 30mph crash into the paddock bend at 3 Sisters racetrack. Six months on crutches followed by a knee operation. The culprit? An RS250 honda on old tyres in the drizzle. The moral? When you buy a new bike, put new tyres on so you KNOW they're good! Post-arthroscopy knee after crash March 1999

Others...

This was Paul Holden's leg after coming off on the grass at 3 Sisters on the CB500. The practice session had ended and Paul just switched off his concentration on sight of the chequered flag! He went grass tracking as normal but fell off after suspect application of the front brake (oh yes - we know all about that one kiddies!) and the bike turned his knee in very badly. A knee drain a few weeks later and he was back in the disco that weekend and even did a Full Monty routine the week after!! Nasty!

This is Adders and his wonderful Halo Jacket after a bit of a trip along the tarmac at the notorious Barn corner at Cadwell Park. He'd been enjoying a track day when the off camber Barn caught its latest victim with a classic lowside! It had been just one of those little crashes until the bike hit the tyre wall bounced back and smacked poor Adders in the back of the head. The result...a fractured wrist (scaphoid), fractured sternum and crushed C5 vertebra - a broken neck to me and you! The result is this nice jacket, a trip to Lincoln hospital and his leathers brutally cut off him and returned in three pieces in a plastic bag. He's still smiling though proving that bikers are made of tougher stuff than most sportsmen! Angelic biker...?!

This is Sean's back...how was it caused? Well a high speed braking maneouvre to avoid an old biddy pulling out on him meant one serious stoppie! Then the bike hit the kerb causing a crash and landed on top of Sean. The heat in the discs from the braking effort was so intense it burnt right through his leathers and left him with this nice crescent shaped burn in his back. The dressing shot includes a lovely oozing wound and obviously a very dedicated girlfriend! Full Moon!

This is the X-ray of Jeroen Baack's collarbone after being taken off his RS125 Aprilia by a bloke doing a dodgy overtake. The other rider came round the outside of Jeroen mid corner and hit Jeroen's clip-on with his shoulder. The resulting crash produced a badly broken collarbone and a very yellow chest! You can see the pre-incident picture on the Paddock Personalities page. X-ray of broken collarbone

These are the 'scaffolding' pictures following Dean Martin's crash in the Supercup 250 race on his Padgetts RS250 Honda at Donnington Park. The race had finished and the slowing down lap was taking place under yellow flags. Unfortunately the idiot behind Dean decided to try to overtake at race speed and T-boned him, breaking his wrist and arm in fourteen places. The recuperation required the cage you see here, but Dean had to have it rebroken a year later to get normal use of his arm back. One of the requirements of this type of cage is that you have to rotate the pins in the arm regularly to prevent the skin drying to them - and apparently it hurts in cold weather as the metal conducts the cold right into the bones - lovely!! Thankfully Dean's throttle hand is now perfectly OK and he's gunning it around the IOM again (110mph average  ain't too shabby round there!) as you can see on the Paddock Personalities page. Scaffolding Pictures

These are the X-rays of Don Foxter's neck. Don takes up the story...."The injury was severe, it happened during a motocross testing session. We were riding fairly fast and I just hit this jump a little sideways and the bike went sideways in the air, I did everything I knew how to do to correct it but it didn't come back all the way before I landed. The only injury in the crash was my neck. I was a quad for several hours till they injected me with a drug that brought the swelling of my spinal cord down. They did surgery and removed the front half of my C6 and put a piece of fibula in between my C5 and C7 and then put in the Titanium plate and screws, I recovered in 3 months and was back racing a bike. It was June 8th when I crashed and I was on a racing bike Sept. 16th. I was unfortunately taken out by an amateur and crashed again, no injuries though. I was back on my motocross bike practicing weeks later...... And you wonder how it happened?! Don on his 'crosser giving it some. X-rays of pinned broken neck vertebrae

More to follow...