The moment you know…

There is that fleeting moment, it’s the split second where you know it’s all gone terribly wrong, but the full extent of the trouble has not played itself out yet.

• When you feel the front tire of the bike go flat on the downhill…
• When you feel the back of the race car step out when you turn into the corner…
• When you see the football heading towards your head…
• When you catch the ball and the biggest forward on the other team is about to hit you…
• When the jump turns out to be bigger than you thought…

Time slows down, senses become much sharper and you notice the details that would have normally passed you by….

Then the impact occurs, you hit bike/ground/car/tree and just for a fleeting second you think that maybe you got away with it, that its not going to hurt as much as you thought…

Then reality smacks you upside the head and it hurts, oh my it hurts…

I was rallying with JB Niday in California a couple of years ago. The notes read “50 Jump 100 Big Jump 350”, translated that’s a jump followed by a short straight that led to another bigger jump, again followed by another straight.

Others slowed for the second jump, we did not, and hit the crest of the second jump at a little over 80MPH. That was the moment we both knew our day had taken a turn for the worst.

It seemed like we were in the air for an age, I had enough time to drop my notes, assume the crash position of putting my chin on my chest and holding onto my shoulder harness to stop my arms flapping around if we rolled.

I then had time to look up once again, see we were still in the air and I recall the ground being a lot closer than it was previously. We were in the air for 164 feet (we went back and measured it) and landed heavily, very heavily, nose first and yes it hurt a lot. It was not pretty, the car was very bent, but we got some cool pictures of the accident.

This is my favourite photo, the front had landed, the back was still in the air with dirt auguring off the front, and the best bit… The brake lights are on.

The car behind us had friends in it, they stopped to see what had happened, we explained how we took the big jump flat. George looked at us and blurted out “you are so f$#%ing stupid…”, Jeff his codriver yelled “You did that? That is so f$#&ing cool…”

That’s rally, and people like George and Jeff are why I love the sport.