Top Kiwi BMX rider Marc Willers crashed spectacularly out of the Central North Island championships in Tauranga yesterday.
The 22-year-old was stretchered off the track and taken to Tauranga Hospital with head and chest injuries. X-rays later cleared him of a broken collar bone, and he was discharged to nurse chipped
teeth and concussion at home.
The Cambridge rider, who became the first New Zealander to make the elite men's finals at the world championships in Paris earlier this year, had a bad start to the second of the three finals races in the super class.
He was last when he over-shot a jump coming off the first bend at the Tauranga BMX track on Sulphur Point, catapulting over his handlebars and into the next rise.
The force of the crash crushed his helmet and caused immediate concern among the gathered officials.
Hamilton's Tony Wilcock, who races for the Tauranga club, later wrapped up the super class with a comfortable final-race victory but admitted some of the shine had been taken off with his friend's crash.
"They had thought he'd broken his collarbone and hurt his neck but he basically just knocked himself out, chipped a tooth and put a few marks on his face," Wilcock said. "I was talking to him last night and he was alright but it was a bit of a worry."
Willers will have to sit out at least a compulsory three-week stand down with his concussion, having wrapped up his first senior superclass title this year, after Wilcock had dominated the last three years.
There were several other big crashes over the two-day meet, with a young Auckland rider also taken to hospital for precautionary scans on Saturday.
Elsewhere, several other Tauranga riders produced notable results in the national qualification meet. Downhill mountainbike star Vanessa Quin won the women's super class, comfortably heading off Auckland riders Alice Rika and Lisa Horlor.
Teenager Charlotte Roberts was sixth in the open women's race and starred by winning the 13-year-old boys final as well.
Kurt Pickard won the intermediate super class title, with Tauranga-based Cambridge rider Eric Matthews third, while eight-year-old Brent Ruguski, veteran Dennis Howlett, Ash Rawson and Graeme Ryall all won their divisions.
