Dissecting the Crash: Red Hook Crit Brooklyn
A Canadian Nat’l Champion and ‘Working Class Athlete’ Reflect on Taking a Spill During the Most Anticipated Fixed-Gear Crit of the Year
Tegan Cochrane sat slouched over in the ambulance, her bronze-brown eyes lacking their usual luster as she stared off into space wondering how, for the second time in less than two weeks, she’d found herself not winning — as a three-time Canadian National Champion on the track might expect — but crashing, this time quite violently.
“What have I done to myself?” she said slowly, dazed. “I’m going to need plastic surgery.”
There was a gash on her chin still dripping with red. She spoke carefully with a new lisp, her tongue grazing two chipped teeth not so hidden behind a swollen and bleeding upper lip.
She’d crashed herself out, she relayed, as I leaned into the ambulance to ask what had happened, wondering if she’d even want to talk. She’d made a bold move, was soloing off the front of the pack during the “Another Chance” qualifier when her pedal struck the ground in a turn.
“My strategy going into the Another Chance race was to protect myself, which meant being at the front of the race,” Tegan said, almost three weeks after the incident.
“For the first couple laps I was making my way to the front, and I used my sprint to open up a sizeable gap between myself and the field. I felt I had the strength and endurance to hold off the pack, so I continued to ride solo out in front. Unfortunately, I had too much speed going into a corner, and my pedal struck the ground, sending me over the handlebars.”
I’d actually asked Tegan, “Did you see what happened?” that afternoon, hoping she knew the reason I had crashed. When I got in line behind the ambulance — her already inside — I assumed we’d been in the same shocking tangle that had sent me and one other girl catapulting into the ground, also in the last turn. Instead, I walked away from the course even more confused, albeit relieved I wasn’t the one with the chipped teeth. That was selfish of me, I suppose.
Later on in the cruise terminal, Kym Perfetto would say something about hoping it wasn’t her who had caused me not to finish (I vaguely remember her saying she’d had to swerve out briefly in avoidance of something, not sure what, which is the move I’d reacted to if you watch the crash video below) then lift up her camera to film my mostly raw emotions about being sent head first into the asphalt and ending what I had considered a surprisingly great race compared to my performance during the first qualifier.
It had all been such a blur that it was easy to joke about after the fact, feeding off Perfetto’s gregarious personality. And I was already in good spirits considering I had left the collision relatively unscathed with only a throbbing bump on the head and a bruised-up leg — nothing a few swigs of the liquid condolences a friend had handed me a few moments later couldn’t cure, if only for the night.
Plus, I’d get to watch the women’s race, something I’d never been able to enjoy as a spectator.
However, I flew home from New York Monday morning with not only a dented helmet and swollen limbs, but a bubbling frustration as me and the almost 6,000 people who viewed this video, wondered (or decided prematurely) how it had happened and, as is human nature, whose fault it was.
Comments and DMs in reply to the vid went like:
“You look like you got scared.”
“What happened, did someone go too wide in the turn?”
“Someone forgot to keep turning.”
“Those two on your left ruined your day.”
“Sry. It’s just not clear.”
The thought that I had been the cause of it made my stomach churn and also question my nearly 10 years of experience riding a brakeless fixed gear bike, both on city streets and for at least three years in myriad races.
This was, in fact, my second crash in two months. The first was a clattering spill after locking handlebars with a rider during a road crit in early March. Six women went down behind us. I was out for two weeks with plenty of road rash, a stiff knee, a bruised ego. Sure, I’d had plenty of close calls (that’s racing) and I’m still bitter about a few of them, but before this season, I’d never gone down in a crit.
Afterward, a teammate said she had a friend who’d be willing to help me practice making physical contact during a race, as if I’d never bumped shoulders, elbows or handlebars before and made it out safely. I took that as her lacking confidence in my abilities, another dent in my confidence (I was still taking things really personally at that point).
And, after having seen a straitlaced track expert or two unable to handle the “fixie-ness” of an event like Red Hook Crit (where no, sprinters aren’t given a designated lane to make their move), I’d been quick to join in on the murmurings that the most lauded track bike criterium in the world was simply too much for them to handle, as if such a thought could lift me above the fray.
That’s clearly not the case.
“The Red Hook Crit was a humbling experience for me, but it didn’t break my spirit or turn me off racing,” Tegan said. “In fact, it made me more excited to gain experience and learn about how I can be successful in this discipline.”
Crashing is a part of racing, though, and a part of life. Sometimes it’s your own damn fault, sometimes it’s a series of unfortunate events that lead to your head hitting the pavement, no matter how experienced or cautious a competitor you may be. Learning to physically endure the crash is one thing, getting your head straight to compete again is another hurdle entirely.
If crashing is inevitable with the increasing amount of time one has spent competing, why reflect on it all? Especially if you’re not going to let it keep you from racing in the future. I suppose I still consider it a novel occurrence, an abrupt halt to a physical flow that literally jostled my brain and also my thoughts, if only for that turbulent few seconds.
I still consider what happened a kind of beautiful reminder — sometimes I try to replay the crash in my mind’s eye, in slow motion on a movie theatre screen— that I had given that race my all, knowing that I’d have to lay it all out on the course again for the main race, because I was living in the moment and letting my competitive instincts take over completely. There had been no doubt.
