Myriam Nicole had a big crash during final practice before her race in Lourdes and, while we don’t know all the details around the crash, James Smurthwaite mentioned on the
Pinkbike Racing Podcast that there was a photo of her helmet with mud on it and she was seen lying in a dark room with an ice pack on her head just two hours before her race run.
Nicole had a huge moment and almost lost control again during her run, but luckily, she held it together and ended up taking second place by 0.624.
Normally prolific on social media, Nicole hadn't updated her Instagram account since April 1st. Yesterday,
she revealed that she's been struggling with post concussion symptoms day and night, including headaches.
While the French rider knows a lot about dealing with injuries to muscles and bones, she says brain injuries are scary. In the past couple of weeks, she's been doing lots of scans and visiting professionals and she says she is now back to hitting intensity safely and is now in Fort William getting ready to compete this week.
| It’s World Cup week! And I couldn’t be more excited about flying to Scotland tomorrow.
To cut a long story short, it’s been a real test since Lourdes as I’ve struggled with post concussion symptoms and to put it lightly, it’s been a nightmare of headaches & other symptom day & night that got stronger with the smallest exertion in the world.
I know a lot about muscles & bones but damn brain injuries are scary!
Take care of your and even if symptoms don’t feel that bad go & get checked!
After doing scan after scan and seeing loads of different professionals (thanks everyone!), I’m now back to hitting intensity safely!—Myriam Nicole |
We wish Nicole all the best this weekend and hope she stays rubber side down.
Data point of one: For many years I rode a really stiff hardtail through rough downhills and I swear I had minor concussion symptoms during that time like short term memory issues and difficulty concentrating. There were times in a run where I would get blurry vision from so many bumps
Bad. Growing evidence of sleddhead from micro concussions in sledding sports
Concussions in Sledding Sports and the Unrecognized “Sled Head”: A Systematic Review
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2018.00772/full
@kingbike2:
It probably only puts the pros under supervision, but still.
www.enduroworldseries.com/news/1309-ews-publish-three-yearinjury-study--concussion-guidelines
I thought that Lorraine Truongs story should've been a warning to every racer?
m.pinkbike.com/news/girl-interrupted-lorraine-truong-head-injury-bmc-bikes.html
C orrupt
I diots
@Ricolaburle:
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/sports/olympics/olympics-bobsled-suicide-brain-injuries.html
bikerumor.com/hit-impact-detection-device-measures-g-force-to-aid-rider-awareness-of-potential-head-injuries
Fortunately most other sports including MTB, I think are targeted at different people.
Brains are too important to risk permanent damage from secondary impacts
I don't know what the UCI concussion protocols are, but they're not good enough.
Also UCI: The ratio of your road bike's seapost diameter to your fork length divided by the distance from the nose of your saddle to a perpendicular bisector from your bottom bracket is over 0.000045 nanometres outside of regulation. You are disqualified.
@Starch-Anton:
That means :
Complaints
Letters
Public shaming
Letters to editors/ papers /mags / tv
Complaints to registration body of any health professionals registration council involved with teams and events.
Legal action against teams / organisations /events/ doctors
The reputational and financial and legal risk to those involved needs to change , for change to happen
The athlete cannot make a decision because of their injury. Those involved in letting them race are responsible. And will be held accountable. They need to decide wether it is before or after they have destroyed peoples lives , there sport and there reputation
@Starch-Anton:
assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/6tSVBOiMStCgLC90S8Dfr7/d75bba19ecb872c496426cb01397af3b/2020-uci-cycling-specific-sport-related-concussion-protocol.pdf
The tricky part is that they can only enforce this against the will of teams and riders if they have staff monitoring athletes with suspected concussion. Because DH is such a niche-sport, they might not have had enough people on site.
She is an adult,Why is she not responsible for her actions. This blaming everyone except the rider is bull shit. people need toTake responsibility for their actions.
Everyone wants to blame the UCI or the race organizers or whoever else, but these riders at the end of the day are more like independent contractors. Outside of the team they ride for they really aren't working for anyone. Who exactly would have the authority to tell them they can't race?
Its easy to compare it to the NFL or NHL where there are concussion spotters who can make that call. But the difference is those player still get their paycheck even if they are made to sit out. Many riders don't have that luxury and I'm sure would be against having someone else tell them when they can or can't ride.
I'm not saying concussions aren't a problem, I'm just saying that its easy to see and article like this and immediately come to the comments section and say "someone should do something". When in reality its likely not an easy solution due to the way the sport operates.
How would cycling ever be able to implement something like that considering that its not the same group of racers at every race, none are employed by the UCI, etc. Its simple to say they should have a doctor make the final evaluation. But what doctor? How would they decided which doctor is making these decisions? And what would the doctor base the decision on? Most concussion symptoms are reliant on the patient telling the doctor about them. Without some baseline testing a doctor really has little reliable way of detecting a concussion if a rider is not forthcoming.
My prediction is that this will become supported by hard evidence and will eventually become ingrained in our understanding of brain injuries.
I’d be amazed if any of the larger teams didn’t have physios present at least, and frankly anyone involved in MTB as a sport in this day and age should be aware of the seriousness of concussions and should have told the team management to get her checked by a race doctor. The team principals involved should be taking a very hard look at the culture that they have created in their own organisations that failed to make that happen.
And for the people talking about an athlete’s personal responsibility - diminished decision making capacity is a major symptom of concussion. A concussion is by definition damage to the organ which allows you to work out if you’re ok or not. Personal responsibility no more applies to a concussed person thinking they can race than it does to a person in a club whose drink has been spiked.
Those test would literally be useless without a baseline to compare it too, which is why they are used. Does a doctor just assume every person in the world is capable or solving the same problems at the same speed? And that every person is the world exhibits the same level of general alertness or coordination.
Yes a doctor would be able to see if someone is clearly suffering from a severe concussion if they are slurring their speech, or stumbling around. But many people with concussions won't show those outward symptoms at all.
10-15 years ago concussions were like smoking in the 70s, we just didn't know any better. Today it is all on her. If she isn't surrounded by a team/friends smart enough to tell her to sit it out she needs a new team/friends. Hard to convince athletes they can't compete due to moderate symptoms btu needs to be done.
Youth sport in my neck of the woods we do regular refresher training on symptoms and I require a family doctor to sign off before letting a player back to practice let alone a game after any type of blow to the head. For awhile I needed to provide links and resources for the docs/parent to get onboard with our back to play steps but now it is mostly common knowledge. Some kids are back the next practice some a few weeks some missed whole seasons. The days of " You good? Get back out there" should be done and gone.
There’s a really simple answer to that - bull shit, they should be expected to protect their athlete above short term results.
The tbi.. lot of subjective evals.
Each player is given a neurological and neurocognitive test and evaluation during the preseason when they are healthy. Those baseline exams are then used to evaluate when/if a player is suffering from a concussion. That’s the only way to know if each individual players is suffering a decline in cognitive performance.
She even told me there are basic tests they can do for concussion symptoms when treating a patient, no baseline cognitive assessment needed. She told me to tell you that emergency medicine has to respond to TBIs all the time and if what you said was true, nobody could get appropriate treatment.
Anyone inside her team who was aware she was suffering but didn’t report to the team boss that she either shouldn’t race or should be evaluated by a doctor before racing is culpable. If the team boss also knew that then he’s culpable. Sure, you can’t fire the team boss but that doesn’t make you any less wrong to claim that nobody could have stopped her from going back on track. That’s a simply absurd statement.
Why don't you go tell Max what you think about how he runs his team.
I'm sure he would love to hear your input haha
But with the French there is always a wild card.
Kind of absurd that you don’t know that.
No one???
That's what I thought. Maybe Pompon will listen to you, I think she's on tinder
Pompon wearing a jersey with Max's name on it..
Hmm.. I wonder if he sponsors the team..
Nah, that's another commencal.
Dumbass.
www.nfl.com/playerhealthandsafety/resources/fact-sheets/nfl-head-neck-and-spine-committee-s-concussion-diagnosis-and-management-protocol#:~:text=The%20Baseline%20NFL%20Locker%20Room,to%20the%20start%20of%20the
Deep pockets, cavernous.
What exactly is your own opinion?
Maybe put the shovel down now, you’ve dug deep enough.
Because you are so dense and need things explicated:
Just because you have a break in your day it doesn't mean you can fix her brain injury on the internet.
Do you understand, slow boy.
Jeez do you live in a council flat in Leeds or something?
Are council flats in Leeds generally where moral high ground types advocating for better handling of brain injuries live? That seems unlikely.
You have just been saying that for a day now without adding anything.
And you can't do anything about it so how about you stfu.
Be real, in the heat of the moment these riders would eat their own leg off to win.
Mips and impact absorbing technology, all good things.
I have always spent a good amount of money on a helmets.
There wasn't any talk of concussion protocol in the 80's and 90's.
If it looked like your lid was damaged you didn't race.
There's a lot of things that play into the impact, everyone should get checked out after damaging a helmet.
Completely different experience road racing AMA in the 90's. I witnessed guys including my teammate laying face down on the tarmac knocked out cold to get up and qualify in the next session a few hours later.
Concussions are tricky and not always easy to diagnose but in this case its pretty clear someone should have stepped in.
Heal up
I have also had a buddy die from the same, big crash on Saturday wrote off a helmet.
Small crash on Sunday wearing a different helmet, brain was inflamed and he didn't make it.
I've been known to get in peoples faces about concussion protocol at MTB races because of this.
Be safe out there kids.
You can race another day if you take care of your brain.
Serious concussions can make you more light sensitive and headache sensitive years later, but she's probably not healed.
Racing after the concussion definitely made her recovery a lot longer.
Racer right after crash: "really, I'm totally okay. No problem at all. Just look at me. Everything's normal."
Racer month later: "In hindsight...."
Not to point on, and imply anything into what Myriam or Thanee said. But it's hard to not see a pattern in all these concussion-related-athlete-statements.
I don't want to see another case, like Lorraine Truong's, where it's been one hit too many.
The studies from Boussi-Gross R et al [3] and Harch PG et al [4, 5] showed HBOT (1.5 atmospheres absolute [ATA], 60 min once or twice daily for 40 sessions) significantly improved symptoms, cognitive abilities, and quality of life, with concomitant improvements in single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) ...Aug 25, 2015
Talk abt getting your bells rung!
It helps your brain heal. Flat out
I’ll never stop being real
But how about this question - what is the one thing Myriam and Tahnee both have in common? An medical therapy in the last year that's never been tested on humans before but everyone blindly trusted because the government said it was "safe and effective"
Some people can't handle reality and are so close minded. You cannot help them bro.
If there's 'tons' of research it should be easy to point us in the direction of where to find it.
They both crashed, hard!
With a significant portion of the crash forces focused on head impacts.
Or maybe they also both drank from the same tap in Lourdes, or had tacos the night before, you could even point out that they're both women?
Correlation does not equal causation.