Racers are one percenters ?

$5K here...... $5K there
and pretty soon it adds up to some real money.

Mere child's play.

Step off, wad yourself up and a little hospital time and you are now missing out on buying that Manx you always dreamt about.

Still mere child's play.

You can loose your health, your wealth, your wife and or your life.

Dances with Shrapnel said:

Step off, wad yourself up and a little hospital time

Click to expand...

No joke. ER for significant injury will START at around $10K...

When I started racing an old TT rider gave me some good advice - 'force yourself to go slow at first and concentrate on becoming smooth.' These days when I race I usually go nowhere near crashing, however when I started, I think I crashed at the first four meetings and once four times in one day. However I have probably got the wrong mentality. You get to know how to crash safely, and I've only ever had one really bad one where I copped an injury - a dislocated chromo- clavicular joint (worse than a broken collar bone, however it could have very easily killed me). Compare the risk with the likelihood and consequences of hitting a truck on a public road and getting run over by it. On a race track the other vehicles are all bikes going the same way with riders looking out for each other. Once you really know the circuit, everything should be hunky-dory, unless you are a panic merchant. I'd say one other thing - if you get on a race circuit and the power or braking characteristics of your bike give you anxiety, do some work on it before you do something nasty to yourself.

Maybe only 1% of those able to race are good-lucky enough not to get so hurt enough they develop skill and nerves to place hi or win and maybe only 1% of race cycles don't break down with hi performance enough to place hi or win.

I just watched "On Any Sunday" for the 1st time about a month ago (new netflix member). I remember when the film came out and how all my friends were raving about it but I never saw it. Even for it's time period it really portrays a racer's lifestyle I thought.