File this under "gotta share it somewhere":
Sunday's finale of Intelli - men's "fixed gear crit". I hear whistles go off and see our chief ref walk out and stop the field to neutralize the race. Not common but not unheard of around here (neutralized a field a couple of days before in lake Bluff for a bad wreck).
I'm a nosey guy. I'm sure it's because I feel some sense of obligation. I have put on roughly 30 races in the last decade. I've worked as Neutral support for probably 40 others. While I'm not an official I am the president of our USA Cycling Local Association. I tend to often be the first one on the scene when people fall down and go boom. So I started walking to where I believed the wreck to be. Sure I didn't need to be there, like I said I guess it boils down to me being nosey and thinking if needed I could step in and help (traffic, pulling barricades, running for a person because I know who it is, etc).
I come up on it and it's bad. Not life threateningly bad (I've seen those and they are hard to shake) but enough I had to leave or I'd lose my lunch. I'll spare everyone the details. but let's just say the rider was tangled with the fence and there was a bit of a "Joe Theismann" leg thing going on. Guy was calm and talking and was most upset no one took a picture. I left and opened up the course for the ambulance.
Still can't fully shake it. Count your blessings and enjoy your day. Also: avoid fixed gear crits. Sure this could happen in any race but can't help but feel like with fixed gear crits it's just kind of fulfilling a prophesy when this stuff happens.