It was a little bit like someone stuck a hoover down my gob and sucked the air out of my lungs. WRD Rider Darren Rudling was out of the first round of the Australian Superenduro Championship.
And the event had not even started yet.
The WRD crew flew in on a Wednesday. They hit fellow team member Wade Ibrahim's purpose-built practice track on Thursday and, not long after lunch, it was all over for Rudling.
Notwithstanding my absolute and utter empathy for Darren as a rider sidelined, I can't quite put the right words around how deflated I was knowing that I would not see him on the starting gate at Ballarat.
I was just so damn keen to see what he could do in the superenduro sand pit! We all were.
That's because superenduro is not his normal playground; in fact, he has never raced super enduro before.
He was a "balls to the wall", wrist fully twisted enduro racer before he went to hard enduro. He has never done any sort of stadium event; he has never even ridden motocross in all his years on a bike!
Therefore, watching him race around a stock yard in country Ballarat was sure to be as entertaining letting a piranha go in a goldfish bowl. So excited was I, that the popcorn was in the microwave days before the big race.
So, you can imagine my devastation when, only 48 hours out, I saw the photo below.
So what actually happened? Up and over a concrete barrier, he dabbed with his left boot as he grounded the bike slightly askew.
The way he described the injury to me on the phone made me shudder just a tad.
"The boot dug in and twisted. My lower leg twisted as far around as it could go before (and you can see it in the photo) it just folded upwards. I felt the tendons go; popping, tearing. I knew it was bad."
"I ruptured the ACL/MCL, fractured the Tibia, tore some ligaments and damaged some of the muscle. They've taken donor tissue from my hamstring, which is going to add to the healing time".
As he was describing it to me, the vision in my mind's eye was one of the composite bands of a frayed occy strap pinging one at a time before letting go entirely!
"Healing from this isn't like the broken bones I have had in the past; where screws and plates go in and the bones heal themselves. Joints are serious and they can be lasting injuries if they are not managed right. The worst thing I can do is try and make a comeback too soon. I have to think first about the family, and then about work. After that, I can think about racing. The Doc says I will be back on the bike soon. I am thinking about six weeks before I can even consider riding."
I was curious and I couldn't help but ask. I wondered, given the extent of the preparation, planning and absolute magnitude of the exercise to get the team over to the ASC in Ballarat, did he think twice about getting on the bike before the event?
He answered immediately and without hesitation "I needed to dial in the bike, I needed to get an idea what the conditions were like over there. I was taking it easy, not pushing it at all."
I have been pondering on that for quite some time.
At what point does a Hard Enduro rider know when enough is enough before an event? When does a competitor decide that the event is too close to risk an injury during practice.
Darren answered with resolve and incredible clarity "A bike injury can lay you up for three months! What do you do? Not ride for three months prior to every event for fear of getting injured?"
With those few words, I think I got a greater appreciation of the decision pathways for racing than I had perhaps had previously.
This is Hard Enduro, and it is not like other sports. It is all about practice and preparation because the terrain in every event is going to be so very different to the event prior. The race itself, for we the spectators, is merely a brief glance through the looking glass of the Hard Enduro season in its entirety.
Racing is a constant but measured compromise between risk vs. reward.
So, on that, what of the season ahead?
Well, by his own admission he is out of the points for the 2023 season. There will be no defense of his 2022 WHES championship, and he is ok with that.
Darren has resolved that the best he can hope for on the local scene is to just stay amongst it and enjoy it; in the short term he will be in the paddock helping the WRD team and WRD Junior Rider Jakob Petrig.
But be warned, the Stallion will be running wild in the woods come November.
And this is bloody fantastic news to me because we've already booked our flights and accommodation for this epic event.
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