7 THINGS I LEARNED FROM BREAKING MY FACE

When a crash left CW's Tom Davidson with a titanium plate in his cheek, his perspective on cycling started to change. Here's what he took away from the saga

- Tom Davidson

Earlier this year, I lived out one of my mum’s worst nightmares. It happened in an instant. I had cycled to the cinema to meet a friend, and while we were watching the film, the weather outside turned stormy. The wind gusts, I thought, would blow me home effortlessly. The ride lasted less than two minutes.

At the first corner – a sharp, wet lefthander – my front wheel slid violently, jackknifing my bike into the tarmac. I don’t remember the impact. All I remember is being scraped off the floor by three men with panicked expressions, who kept asking me if I was OK. Proudly, I shooed them away, but the throbbing in my face, the pain in my wrist, and the general dizziness I felt made it clear to me that I was not, in fact, OK.

The nurse in A&E helped me piece together the crash. My left cheek had hit the road, hard, and was now as flat as the tarmac it had bounced off. A CT scan confirmed three fractures in my face, plus a broken wrist, and I was booked in for emergency surgery 48 hours later. This would stop my “eye material” from “sagging” through the broken cheekbone, which sounded like a good idea. Today, a small titanium plate holds it all in place, and will do so for the rest of my life.