fiamme red
05-14-2008, 02:48 PM
http://www.oregonlive.com/outdoors/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/sports/1210650910237870.xml&coll=7
http://www.pedalmag.com/index.php?module=Section&action=viewdetail&item_id=7527
"Tough" is the one word everyone uses with reverence when they talk about the former World Champion Kick-boxer. "She is the toughest woman I've ever met," says Mandy Poitras, Goldstein's long time rival and now her teammate. "She's lucky to be alive much less riding better than ever after her accident."...
She had won 9 of 11 races when her season and almost her life came to a sudden, terrifying end on July 7, 2005 on a high speed descent in the Cascade Classic in Bend, Oregon.
"A rider in front of me kind of lost her nerve on a corner and cut in front of me taking out my front wheel," recalls Leah. "I went down face first at 70 kilometres an hour and everyone behind piled up on top of me. I fell so hard that I broke the roots of five of my teeth and now need implants. My lips got rubbed off, I had road rash from one end of me to the other. I broke my right arm, ribs, a cheekbone and my pelvis was in pieces."
She lay on the road for an hour and a half in excruciating pain, no one able to move her until an air ambulance finally arrived. She spent the next five weeks in hospital in Bend and back home in Vancouver. Her father Sam says "When I saw her I couldn't believe she was still alive. I told her she wasn't racing again but you know Leah. She won't give up. What can I do?"
She was in a wheelchair for the next two months, able to move only her left arm and leg, but she talked her mother and sister into driving her to a nearby school track everyday where she started doing laps. "It took me an hour to do two laps," she says. "But I had to do something. You suddenly go from 20 hours of hard training a week to being bed bound and it drives you crazy. I had to be extra careful because I couldn't move my pelvis. I had it constantly x-rayed. Doctors couldn't believe how well and quickly it was healing."
http://www.pedalmag.com/index.php?module=Section&action=viewdetail&item_id=7527
"Tough" is the one word everyone uses with reverence when they talk about the former World Champion Kick-boxer. "She is the toughest woman I've ever met," says Mandy Poitras, Goldstein's long time rival and now her teammate. "She's lucky to be alive much less riding better than ever after her accident."...
She had won 9 of 11 races when her season and almost her life came to a sudden, terrifying end on July 7, 2005 on a high speed descent in the Cascade Classic in Bend, Oregon.
"A rider in front of me kind of lost her nerve on a corner and cut in front of me taking out my front wheel," recalls Leah. "I went down face first at 70 kilometres an hour and everyone behind piled up on top of me. I fell so hard that I broke the roots of five of my teeth and now need implants. My lips got rubbed off, I had road rash from one end of me to the other. I broke my right arm, ribs, a cheekbone and my pelvis was in pieces."
She lay on the road for an hour and a half in excruciating pain, no one able to move her until an air ambulance finally arrived. She spent the next five weeks in hospital in Bend and back home in Vancouver. Her father Sam says "When I saw her I couldn't believe she was still alive. I told her she wasn't racing again but you know Leah. She won't give up. What can I do?"
She was in a wheelchair for the next two months, able to move only her left arm and leg, but she talked her mother and sister into driving her to a nearby school track everyday where she started doing laps. "It took me an hour to do two laps," she says. "But I had to do something. You suddenly go from 20 hours of hard training a week to being bed bound and it drives you crazy. I had to be extra careful because I couldn't move my pelvis. I had it constantly x-rayed. Doctors couldn't believe how well and quickly it was healing."