For me there’s a particular point in our medical team’s management of a serious injury situation when I feel the most relief. That’s when the involved rider gets on a plane and heads home. Early this morning our Team Physiologist Allen Lim took Dave Z to a small nearby airport and got him headed to LA to join his pregnant, soon-to-deliver wife Randi.

Allen, Team Chiropractor Kevin Reichlin, and I collaborated to make that moment possible, and I’m both relieved and proud of how we managed the situation. Dave had a serious injury and was never for a moment out of the capable hands of one of us or, later on, those of our amazing soigneurs. And now he’s headed home to the ones who care about him the most. Yeah and wheeew!

The rest of the crew are a bit banged up and bruised, but hanging in there with good morale. Julian (left post crash) and Pat in particular have miscellaneous routine crash-related injuries, but are doing fine. A couple of others have minor wear-and-tear issues we’re looking after. However after yesterday’s sketchy racing and record-setting transfer (well-chronicled below by David M and Pat), we can probably survive anything the Giro decides to throw at us.

So much of succeeding over here has to do with temperament… specifically the ability to just take situations as they come and to simply accept them for what they are. It’s a character trait that I think everyone in our Giro entourage has and it makes all the difference.

24 hours have passed now since the Tour of Flanders and I’m really happy (and significantly relieved) that no one was seriously hurt. Mike Friedman crashed at a really bad time, banging himself up a bit. Though he wrecked his chances of a good showing more than his rugged Meatball body.
Despite the epic weather conditions, […]

Damn, I hate calls like this. Johnny Weltz called to let me know that Steven went down in stage 3 of De Panne and landed badly on his shoulder breaking his clavicle (”collar bone”). The x-ray showed a crack near the end of the clavicle where it joins the scapula (”shoulder blade”). For a refresher […]

So I’m just getting going on a night shift in Emergency at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, CA (my day job as it were). My cell rings and the caller ID shows a country code 34 number: Spain. Probably Girona and something from a rider.
In fact it’s assistant DS Matt White […]

We can now officially remove Maggy (Magnus Backstedt) from our Injured Reserves list.
Tuesday, he completed the difficult 7-day Italian stage race Tirreno-Adriatico. He finished (how shall I say it?) well back. But given his Tour of Qatar crash in January, and the surgical repair of his fractured right clavicle in London the next […]

Team Physician, Prentice Steffen, MD writes from Paris-Nice with Team’s Slipstream/Chipotle’s first “Injured Reserves” report:
I can only speak with authority about Slipstreams/Chipotle medical situations, but I can say with certainty that we’ve not had medical luck on our side recently. I arrived in France last week wondering if our good fortune would continue to hold […]