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What it's like to fall off at 170mph...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010

Here at Visordown Towers, we've been leafing through loads of issues of the magazine for a couple of days. The reason? Visordown.com is ten years old and our next issue will celebrate this monumentous occassion. I stumbled accross this piece I wrote a while back and thought I'd share it again. It was my fastest ever crash and I hope it will always remain that way...

"That gut-churning delay between thinking this was the final curtain and the moment of impact with the abrasive tarmac of Bruntingthorpe's two-mile runway seemed to last for minutes rather than split seconds. Slow-mo vision. Fuck me, 170mph is fast when you're about to bail out.

In a moment of appalling panic braking, I'd locked the front wheel almost the instant I whipped through the speed trap at 174mph. I saw the end of the runway, thought I couldn't stop and - not to put a too finer point on it - shat my pants and grabbed a big handful of front brake lever.

I remember sliding and getting very, very hot. As I waited to slam into the bank at the end of the runway I started to grip and tumble  - arms, legs, hands and feet flailing in every direction. It was very bad.

Then I twatted my head and knocked myself out. A huge relief: out cold, better than any drug for dealing with pain.

Miraculously unbroken with just the tiniest cut on my thumb, I came round to discover two complete strangers pouring whisky into my mouth. The only witness to the whole crash, the man operating the speed trap, was so convinced I was dead that he jumped in his car and drove in the opposite direction to call the emergency services.

To this day I still 'enjoy' a recurring nightmare where my moment of losing the front and hitting the tarmac coincides with falling out of bed and hitting the carpet. It seems that crashing whilst pinned in sixth on Kawasaki's fastest is not a sensation you ever forget. But the biggest irony is that if I'd just braked normally, I'd have stopped at the end with room to spare!"


By mark forsyth


See also: Kawasaki Supports International Female Ride Day, Learn on track with Mackenzie and Whitham at Focused Events , Put a sting in your 2010 Z1000's tail.