Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood: Wear your damn helmet!

by Neal Rogers

• March 13, 2003
• Comments Off

By Neal Rogers

Last week I wrote a column about the passingof Fred Rogers, a.k.a Mr. Rogers, who succumbed to cancer at the ageof 74. Of course I prefer to write about bike racing, or music, or women,or women who bike race, but I felt it appropriate to pay tribute to theman from whose lifetime contribution I’d borrowed the title of my column.

I didn’t expect to be writing about anyone else’s passing so soon, buttoday, it’s all I can imagine writing about.

I’d set the alarm so I could watch Paris-Nice from bed Wednesday morning,and upon waking, a quick hit on the remote brought me an image of AndreiKivilev, with “1973-2003” under his photo. Kivilev had not yet reachedthe age of 30, a milestone I’ll be reaching this weekend.

Instead of their usual commentary, OLN’s Paul Sherwen and Bob Roll appearedshell-shocked as they tried to grapple with the tragedy of Kivilev’s death, and how on this day, the peloton at Paris-Nice would be riding, not racing, in his honor.

Strange how hearing news like that really puts everything into perspective;another parking ticket, flare-ups with friends or family, whatever it is,it all seems pretty trivial when you realize how quickly it can disappear.Sure, some days the glass is half-empty, and some days the glass is half-full,but either way, an awareness of the glass beats the alternative.

One thing is for sure — Andrei Kivilev started the second stage of Paris-NiceTuesday, and today he is gone, leaving behind a young wife and their newbornson.

During Tuesday’s televised coverage, the overhead helicopters brieflyshowed the Kazakh rider on the ground, motionless. It looked pretty bad,I thought, but the peloton had been traveling at relatively slow speedson a flat section. It was the fact that he wasn’t wearing a helmet thatgave cause for alarm. (It was later revealed that Kivilev had been adjustingthe race radio in his jersey pocket, and didn’t have a hand on the barswhen he touched wheels with another rider and flipped over the bars.)

Later during the day, I read that the Cofidis rider had slipped intoa coma. It touched a nerve for me, as a friend here in Boulder, Colorado,had slipped into a coma in January, after a cycling accident. She was relativelynew to cycling, and also wasn’t wearing a helmet when she went over thebars and smacked her head. Two months, multiple brain surgeries and half-a-milliondollars in medical bills later, she’s back on her feet, lucky to be alive.

That friend wears a helmet now, all the time. She has to. Surgeons removedpart of her skull, and until the swelling in her brain has gone down anddoctors insert a titanium plate, she must wear protective headgear.

Kivilev wasn’t so lucky. Doctors tried in vain to save him over night,but couldn’t. In the days since, a debate over the wearing of helmetsin the pro peloton has arisen. Cofidis team doctor Jean-Jacques Menuethas stated on the record that wearing a helmet would have almost certainlyhave saved Kivilev’s life.

However, two-time Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon has publiclydeclared that a helmet wouldn’t have saved Kivilev. “We can’t blame anythingexcept for bad luck,” Fignon is quoted. “If you fall face first, it usuallymeans that you didn’t anticipate falling. You can’t do anything about it.”

While I’m the first to admit that Fignon has more knowledge of bikeracing in his pinky finger than I do in my entire body, I have to ask —what the hell is he talking about? You can’t do anything about it?Does Fignon abstain from wearing a seatbelt as well?

The very fact that such accidents are unanticipated speaks volumesabout the need to take action ahead of time. Sure, often when you’re falling,particularly on a road bike, it is unanticipated (As opposed to tryinga tricky section on a mountain bike, where a crash is often a calculatedrisk.) But you don’t do something about it mid-air, you do something aboutit as you leave your house, when you strap on the skid-lid.

A few years ago, during a triathlon in California, a close friend wasstruck by a car while leading the race. He slid 40 feet across the road,and miraculously walked away with nothing but painful dose of road rash. The top of his helmet, however, looked like someone had run a belt sander across it. He keeps it on the wall, as a memento of his luck… and as a reminder.

The chain ring gouges on the back of my old Specialized Sub-6 Pro remindme, too. Years ago, while riding alone, I went over the bars on an extremelysteep mountain bike trail, only to have the bike follow behind me. Thebike hit me so hard it felt as if someone had thrown it at me. IfI hadn’t been wearing a helmet, the chain rings would have gone straightinto the back of my head, and my guess is I would have been knocked unconscious, laying face down in the middle of the woods.

In San Francisco, I saw a cyclist go head first into a parked car whiletrying to avoid being hit by a cab. I was the first on the scene, and itwas scary. After the paramedics took him away — he was a little bustedup, but otherwise okay — they told me that he probably wouldn’t have gottenup if not for his helmet.

I’m sure Laura Van Gilder would agree. Last weekend at the Pomona Valley Stage Race, the Saturn sprinter was leading the stage 2 circuit race when her handlebar strayed into a roadside pylon, and she went down hard. According to team manager Giana Roberge, Van Gilder suffered road rash, “a well earned broken helmet and only a slight bump on her head.”

To be fair, there is no guarantee. In 2000, Nicole Reinhart, the talented Saturnathlete, died after colliding with a tree during a race. She waswearing a helmet, but, tragically, it wasn’t enough to save her. Like seatbelts,they’re not foolproof, but I’ll take the odds.

Now I know how it’s “cool” to go without a helmet. It’s some sort ofEuro’ rock-star fashion statement to wear a color-coordinated beanie instead,with sunglasses perched on your forehead. My friend thought so too; shedoesn’t anymore. I’m sure to get plenty of disagreement here, but bikeracing is not about looking cool. It’s not about stylish do-rags or bandanas.It’s about pushing hard and taking risks. And it’s about living to rideanother day.

So wear your damn helmet. Put one on your kids. In case you’re stillstuck in 1980, today’s helmets are light and well ventilated, and you canprobably find one color coordinates with your “stylish” spandex outfit.So find one you like, one that fits, and wear it every time you ride. (Outdoors— you can skip it at your Spin class.)

And if nothing else, don’t listen to me, listen to the sage advice offered from the great minds over at The Onion, who, in a piece titled “Bicycle Safety Tips,” advise “Always wear a helmet. If this makes you uncomfortable, think of the helmet as a crown, and yourself as King Dorko.”

Amen and long live King Dorko!

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