Peaty's prang - the details from the man himself

 

British downhill mountain bike star Steve Peat dislocated his foot in a crash at the weekend (see full story here). But Peaty's not letting it spoil his determination to make a showing at the world championships in Fort William, Scotland, September 3-9. Can he recover in time? He seems to think so as he implies in this statement where he tells the tale of the crash in his own words.

As you all have probably heard, I had a little accident at the weekend and as I know how rumours spread I thought it was time to let you all know the real story.

I was at the British National champs at Rehola and had been practising all day Saturday. I went up for my seeding run at 6pm and was on a good one, four seconds up on Marc Beaumont at the split. Then I came into the infamous "Star Wars" section of the track. I slipped on a root coming into it and stuck my left foot out to take a steadying dab, but little did I know at that speed but there was a big hole that my foot went into and as soon as it touched the mud it popped straight out of socket. I carried on with my crash knowing that when I stopped rolling around my foot would be in the wrong direction to the rest of my body. I let a few swear words out then crawled out of the mud pit to some dryer land to wait for the Extreme Medic guys to come help.

First diagnosis was that I had dislocated my ankle and fractured a bone. I was gutted. All I could think about was Fort Bill and getting better for that race. Once we finally got me loaded in the ambulance and got to the hospital they could assess it better.

I was pretty out of it at this point as I made them give me more morphine, saying I was a big lad and needed a large dose. Thanks to Titley's friend making a call there was a doctor waiting for me at the entrance who took good care of me. He ended up opening my foot up so he could watch the bones and see that the dislocation had gone back in properly.

It wasn't until two days later, when I came down from the morphine, that he explained what he had done. It turns out that he learnt something from me that night as he has never seen a foot dislocated before. It came out below my ankle bone which is apparently really rare.

Anyway it went back in fine and I don't have any fractures in my bones. They put me in a pot (cast to the other half of the world) and said to stay off it for six to eight weeks. Very conservative I thought, so once I have seen the specialist on Friday I will know a better recovery time.

I would like to thank Matt and Rich from Extreme Medical, very professional guys.

And I would also like to thank all the guys and girls that helped carry me out of a muddy forest, much appreciated everyone.

Cheers,
Steve

PS. I hope to see you all in Fort William.

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