Having raced downhill, dual slalom, four-cross and enduro – and having won the brutal Red Bull Rampage – I’m no stranger to crashing. It’s part of the job. But nothing in my career prepared me for what happened in 2013 at Megavalanche La Réunion.
That day, I came closer to dying than I ever have. The medics later told me they were shocked I survived.
The footage of the crash didn’t just end up online – it became the basis of a TV documentary and is now used in first-aid and medical training courses.
"I’m going to die. I have 10 minutes"
La Réunion wasn’t new to me. I’d been going there for years. For the boys and me, the annual mass-start downhill on this volcanic island in the Indian Ocean had become a tradition.
Every year, we’d rent a house, bring the families, ride bikes and enjoy life. I’d be there to try to win. My friends? They were there for fun. It was the perfect mix.
That year, though, there had been a lot of rain. The dirt was slick, greasy – the kind of surface where things can change in a split second.
Everything was going fine until I hit a tractor path through a sugarcane plantation near the end of the course. It was super easy… but really slippery. I came into a corner, the front started sliding and I went down.
My handlebar was dragging on the ground when they clipped a rock. The brake lever snapped around and stabbed straight into my leg.
The pain from the impact was insane. Then I looked down. My race pants were completely red. I opened the fly and there was blood everywhere – and a hole in my leg so big I could put my fist inside it.
I could actually see a vein. Instinct kicked in. I grabbed it and jammed my finger on it to stop the bleeding.
I’d punctured my femoral artery, and I was bleeding out.
Luckily, my friends arrived quickly. I told one of them, “Help me. I’m going to die. I have 10 minutes”.
Another friend dropped his knee on top of my hand to keep pressure on the wound and held my shoulders. We stayed like that for an hour. An hour.
I could feel myself fading. Then I heard the helicopter.
I was drifting away, almost falling asleep, when my friend shouted, “Cédric, no!” I knew I was dying. I started giving things away – my cars, the house.
My will wasn’t up to date, so I was trying to organise everything out loud. I wanted it recorded.
People talk about seeing a tunnel of light. I didn’t see any tunnel. What I felt was… peaceful. Like sitting on your sofa watching a movie. You relax. You shut down. It feels good.
But I could still hear my friend’s voice. That’s what pulled me back. The hardest part wasn’t the pain. It was seeing the fear in my friends’ eyes.
“If we have to cut the leg off, cut it off now”
When the doctor arrived with the air ambulance crew, things got surreal.
At one point, I took my hand off the wound to show them how bad it was. The two other crew members fainted. I started yelling at them – using very bad words in French!
I told the doctor, “If we have to cut the leg off, cut it off now”.
Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary. They put me on a stretcher and started carrying me to the helicopter, which was about 500m away in a field.
They were all walking backwards. I remember saying, “Guys, we can stop for a second so you can turn around. It’ll be easier!” Then I added, “But maybe go a little bit faster… I don’t have much blood left!”
Even in that moment, there was laughter.
Starting to relax a little bit, I had taken a small sip of water, which I ended up throwing up over the doctor's shoes – they were Salomon trail shoes for the mountains. I remember noticing they were brand-new, looking at him and saying, “Sorry, sorry about that… I hope you’re sponsored,” He just replied, “No, it’s okay”.
In an unbelievable stroke of luck, another tourist on the island was a vein specialist. His son heard about the crash and called him from the beach to come help. I went into surgery and, three days later, I walked out of the hospital.
I was so stoked to be alive. I jumped on a bike, drank a beer and smoked a cigarette. Probably not what the doctor ordered – but I was alive.
On the box
When the helmet-cam footage surfaced in the MTB media, National Geographic got in touch and asked for it. One of my friends had filmed the crash.
They came to my house in France that summer to talk about the story one-to-one. It went on TV. After that, hospitals and fire departments started calling me. They wanted to know what special technique we’d used to survive.
The truth? Nothing special.
One friend owns a restaurant. One is a pilot. I’m just a bike rider. None of us were experts in femoral bleeding. But when you’re in survival mode, something switches. Either you die, or you figure something out.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid anything that horrific. But the footage is still used in first-aid and medical training.
It also pushed me to start giving blood. They gave so much to me – I had to give something back.
The funny thing? Even at the clinic, they recognised me.
One of the staff looked at me and said, “Are you Cédric Gracia? Yesterday, we watched your video”.
Life’s crazy like that. One minute, you’re racing your bike with your friends in paradise. Next, you’re holding your own artery closed, trying to stay alive.
And somehow, you get to tell the story.
