Bad News! I'm coming home.

Hi All,

Just had the worst news confirmed.

The crash on Sunday caused my arm that had been broken to fracture again. When I went for a x ray 2 days ago, the x ray didn't show a hairline fracture. So I went riding yesterday and felt something go pop. I went back to the hospital tonight and had another x ray. This time is showed the break. The break is from the last screw of the plate they put in 10 weeks ago, and it goes up my arm to my elbow.

Looks like I'll be coming home. If I'm out for 6 weeks, then it's not worth staying here because I will miss 2 world cups.

This just tops off a season I would rather forget. I am devastated to say the least.

This has made me more determined to come back next year with a whole new focus on achieving my goals. I will train hard through this off season and make up for a terrible 2010.

I would personally like to thank Tomaso from Ancillotti racing. I feel like I have let you down. You have been great to me all through these hard times and for that I thank you.

Cheers
Rhys

Italian Cup Round 3

Hi All,

So the past weekend saw the third round of the Italian Cup series at Campo Felice near to L'Aquila the Italian city that was ravaged last year by a huge earthquake.

George and I made the trip to Rome and met up with another team mate Francesco Petrucci. We set up our team tent and all was going well until a helicopter decided to land in the car park. I saw our tent flying in the air while coming down the track from practice. Nothing worse than having to phone your team manager and tell him the tent is stuffed. Tomaso took the news well, but I hope it doesn't cost Tomaso alot to fix.

I wasn't overly excited with this track, but riding it was different and after the first few runs I was into it ,some bits could of been better but it was really loose due to all the rocks which made it pretty fun.

Qualifying went well and I ended up in 2nd place after Shaun O'Conner. I was feeling happy with that result. With all the bad luck I've been having this year, it was good to qualify 2nd, when you had riders like Shaun, Wyn and Matt Scoles, plus the 100 or so Italian riders.

Final day came around and for once this season, I was feeling confident. I took off from the start gate and all was going well, until I came into the forest section, my wheel hit one of those loose rocks and sent me flying into a tree. The first thing I felt was pain in my arm that had just recovered from a break. I picked myself up, jumped back on my bike and came across the line in 6th place. Still not a bad result considering I crashed.

The pain in my arm was bad and i knew something was wrong. More about that in a sec. here is a great photo of me during practice.

Here are some videos. The first one is a helmet cam of me riding the track. One video is from the racing and one is from Wyn Masters. All great videos to watch.



Two of the videos can be seen at this link: http://www.dhdvideomag.tv/