PRESS RELEASE: RAAW Mountain Bikes555 RAAW Gravity Racing is a UCI Mountain Bike Team racing downhill World Cups. The young team consists of four riders aged between 17 and 27. Injuries, and particularly head injuries, unfortunately go hand in hand with the sport. Cuts, bruises and broken bones are very tangible, obvious to the laymen and medic alike and treatment is advanced and well understood.
Head injuries and traumatic brain injuries, known as concussion, are very different. They can occur from just riding fast over rough terrain, landing jumps and drops in addition to more obvious impacts following crashes. Although there are some classic symptoms we currently have no way of monitoring, recording or accurately diagnosing these injuries which can occur from either a one off bang as well as an accumulation of smaller knocks.
| We have a duty of care and moral obligation to look after our riders and do everything we can to utilise available tech in order to prevent all injuries to our riders.
When I heard about HIT Ltd and the fantastic, cutting edge research they were conducting on monitoring, recording and analysing the data from head impacts it was an absolute no brainer to work with them, excuse the pun!—Mark Goodwill, 555 RAAW Gravity Racing Team Manager |
The small, inexpensive unit from
HIT Ltd fastens safely onto the helmet and is light enough that the rider is oblivious to its existence, but the unit continually monitors impacts. The data is downloaded to the bespoke companion app giving the rider a clear indication of impacts personalised for their age, weight and activity.
| This personalisation is important as a recent scientific paper in Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine concludes female athletes are more susceptible to concussions and experience worse outcomes than male athletes.
This technology possesses such promise and benefit that it would be great to see a day where it’s widely accepted and utilized as well as closer to being a mandatory process in bike racing. It offers the ability to not only manage concussions but also all the data and experience obtained will help go towards understanding brain traumas and treatment better and potentially aiding helmet manufacturers improve helmet safety.—Mark Goodwill, 555 RAAW Gravity Racing Team Manager |
| As someone who has unfortunately suffered multiple concussions in the past, head safety is something that I now consider particularly important. I believe we should take a lot of care when it comes to potential brain injuries, however, sometimes it can still be hard to make the correct decisions regarding them especially if no major issues are shown at the time. Hopefully access to the correct data can improve the informed decision-making process when things aren’t clear so that brain health isn’t compromised. Going forward, HIT and their product have potential to play an important role in the sport, I’m genuinely pleased to be promoting their product!—Luke Williamson, 555 RAAW Gravity Racing |
| Often we speak to riders and keep hearing ‘When you crash often you dust yourself off, check the bike’s okay, make sure there’s no pain or visible injury and back on the bike to continue riding’. Concussion and brain injuries in general are the only injuries where you're asking the injured organ to self-diagnose. There is no pain, just often confusion and reliance on symptom identification. The margin for error with elite mountain biking is tiny, and if you’re riding impaired, even the slightest loss of focus can lead to catastrophic accidents and injury, let alone drop in performance. Thats where HIT can protect by providing instant severity, knowledge and clarity of head impact incidents. As athletes, pros and every day riders, we want to track the speed, the amount of steps, our heartrate and more. Yet we don’t check the severity of impact to the head when landing a jump hard or taking a tumble. Everyone is so concerned about brain injury, and as one of the most severe injuries long-term that you can suffer, the need to know when to continue or stop is massively neglected. HIT aims to recognise, remove and assess, letting the rider or coach know when to take further action, when to dust yourself off and continue or when to take time to let the dust settle seeking further care. In simple terms HIT provides, instant clarity of g-force severity, objective data knowledge and a bespoke cognitive brain passport that’s unbiased and unaffected by situation, event or feeling. We are delighted to be working with 555 RAAW Gravity Racing who are taking massive steps forward in rider safety, education and taking note of head injuries by using HIT to recognise risky impacts early and take the steps to remove riders and assess to take the immediate steps to recover before it compounds and amounts to significant time out of the sport.—Euan Bowen, HIT Ltd |
| Crashes are part of our sport, but the amount of experience around brain injuries is limited. The right amount of recovery for brain injury used to be hard to determine and the decision to go back to training was often influenced by other motivations than health alone. Having the racers equipped with the HIT system is a great leap for brain injury protocols, pushing the sport in a safer direction.—RAAW Mountain Bikes |
For more information about the technology and the company, visit
hitrecognition.co.uk.
555 RAAW Gravitiy Racing is represented by
Netperformance.
www.specialized.com/ca/en/stories/angi
They come standard on their dh helmets. They should come on all helmets honestly. This should be a standard.
I'll pick my price point thank you very much. You want bells and whistles and warning lights and a bat man beacon to save you from concussions....pony up extra.
Standard? Bah!
Yes - we also agree. Head injuries and concussion are not only a MTB issue but a sporting wide issue. Our tech can be switched onto ski, snowboarding, road cycling and horse riding helmets to name a few. We aim to continue this brain health awareness conversation via the use of our tech. Making the invisible injury visible.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Thanks so much for the kind words and support.
It is interesting to learn from your ski patroller point of view.
Yes - and the organ that is reporting is the damaged organ, so we need to better protect athletes and remove that decision making from them.
You can also put one of our devices onto a ski helmet or other helmets such as horse riding, road cycling and snow boarding - we have made it multi use and transferable.
Thanks - we have deliberately made the price point accessible as we dont believe in pricing anyone out of brain health awareness and mitigation.
#ProtectYourNoggin
The Angi sensor is a crash detection and safety beacon whereas the HIT sensor is a head impact indicator. The HIT sensor is always collecting data, even if you don’t have a fall, crash or big accident – it is picking up all that accumulative load which then also displays this in a graphic like chart with three load sections, counting how many g-forces and putting them in red, amber and green. HIT is designed to act as a tool of mitigation whereas the Angi sensor alerts an emergency contact to advise you that they have had a crash / accident.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Team HIT here
Great that you had this conversation! So important, no matter who the person is, there background or job - we need to keep challenging and checking this. Well done!
#ProtectYourNoggin
Second time I've seen you post in this same article that it should be made mandatory.
Want the tech...pay for it your damn self. Don't try to enact regulations in the forums you Canadian Troudeaux fanatic.
#ProtectYourNoggin
If anything, it needs a bit more Murphy's Law to thin this massive herd
Its not about more regulations. Its about improving standards. Taking all of the research and findings and putting them into practice - so that everyone in sport and society can become more brain health aware. Mitigate risk, and ensure that they can recognise, remove and assess any head impacts being sustained.
#ProtectYourNoggin
I'm perfectly fine with having more options to choose from. Not fine with a helmet 'standard', which is still a regulation. Your tech doesn't need to be a "Standard" in helmets. An option...absolutely.
What was I talking about?
I joke but I have had several nasty concussions. The last one, 3 years ago yesterday, was bad. I lost pretty much the entire day of the crash and honestly still feel like I have not fully recovered.
Any tech that, even slightly, helps is awesome in my mind. This could have so much impact to all aspects of TBI and our understanding of it.
If my mom could have an orange sized tumor removed from her skull, turn mute, then fully cognizant again in less than 6 months....there's plenty of hope for your skull sponge.
Exactly. One brain. Never underestimate the value in protecting your noggin!
Spot on - you only have one brain.
Your brain health affects all areas of your life.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Very well said!!
We have deliberately kept our price point at an accessible point as brain health awareness is for everyone. We dont want to price anyone out of the ability to recognise, remove and assess head impacts in Sport.
Thanks so much for the support.
#ProtectYourNoggin
I understand that most team managers don't care and most racers would rather injure themselves then lose some points, but a governing body should in theory be a voice of reason striving to protect the riders.
Team HIT here!
Yes, we agree - needs to be a full circle approach to get everyone involved. Allowing us to remove the subjective behaviours around recognising head impacts. We also like this approach - third party doctors to oversee it and protect athletes. #ProtectYourNoggin
Do make sure you check out our website to read more and look to get your own hands on a device. www.hitrecognition.co.uk
Our tech then allows you to understand the head impacts you are sustaining - Live time data at your fingertips.
Recognise. Remove. Assess.
#ProtectYourNoggin
1 Calibration; does the device need any routine service or calibration, and are they calibrated initially or is consistency between units and over time maintained in a way that does not require calibration?
2 Battery life and ip68 protection? What can the user expect regarding product life and durability?
3 Product lifetime; does the device need to be reset or replaced after a specific duration or level of impact?
Thanks in advance
Thanks for sharing!
Your company sound really interesting
Is this them here: neurologicperformancegroup.com/about ??
#ProtectYourNoggin
We are providing baseline testing to athletes as well as post-concussion care to determine a safe timeline for resuming activity.
Thanks for the support.
Yes, very good point - we hope more racing teams endorse this tech, so its mandatory on riders.
Spot on - we are very excited about the data collection involved and what that means for collectively furthering our knowledge around head impacts.
#ProtectYourNoggin
One thing they should be selling this on is...helmet replacement. How do you know when to replace your fancy 200-400$ helmet? Its always a gamble and super expensive and the things are so often listed as "one crash helmets". Having a small data point to help with that expensive decision would be nice.
Awesome to read!!
#ProtectYourNoggin
Thanks! We also agree - the more information we have, the more data to analyse.
Yes, a small simple device designed to allow you the chance to recognise, remove and assess head impacts.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Surprised more teams/riders aren't running this in DH and Enduro.
There can be large forces that don't cause concussions and small forces that can concuss another individual at another time.
Just because there were "X" newtons of force during a ride does not correlate to a concussion.
I like the gathering of data, but concussions are still.a subjective diagnosis. We are getting closer to blood/enzyme/imaging tests as indicators, but for now, if they have any concussion symptoms, they should be held out of that event until cleared by medical team.
Team HIT here
We are not saying our tech recognises when / if you have had a concussion.
What we are saying is that our tech allows the wearer to be given a live time g-force head impact reading, so that they can recognise, remove and assess any head impacts.
Yes - concussions can be subjective, but our data is objective.
Yes - the data collection side of things is invaluable - we then feed this back to our research partners for us to collectively learn more about head impacts in Sport.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Thank You!
Great to read you also understand the severity of CTE and how important brain health is
We have experienced some very interesting feedback, with some rejecting understanding of head injuries in Sport.
It is great you are an ally!!
#ProtectYourNoggin
Thank you so much! We aspire to get to a stage where our tech is applied / implemented and made mandatory within MTB racing. #ProtectYourNoggin
Thank you - we also want our tech to be mandatory and even better if we can partner up with helmet manufacturer(s) to get our tech integrated into helmets! #ProtectYourNoggin
Thank you very much! We are delighted to bring our product to the market and get this tech in the hands of more riders. #ProtectYourNoggin
Thank you!! Allowing you to recognise, remove and assess head impacts when out Mountain Biking. #ProtectYourNoggin
Thanks! We are super excited to be working with the young riders over on team 555 RAAW Gravity.
#ProtectYourNoggin
Brain injuries, TBI, Concussion and head impacts are not a hoax.
Science, research, experiences and medicine shows brain injuries are an issue and massive concern.
Please do have a read on our website and look into this, so you can become educated, aware, mindful and knowledgeable around brain health.
#ProtectYourNoggin.