UKH

What's with the broken back club this year?

Has there ever been a season like this for such nasty injuries?

Pierre Latour
Tony Martin
Vincenzo Nibali
Mikel Landa

Ah, the weight of expectation takes its toll

In the bad old days wouldn't those people have been moved carelessly after the accident and lost the use of their limbs?  

I can't help noticing that number of teams with special pockets in the rear of the jersey for radios, not sure if that's related i.e. landing on your back with a metal box near or on your spine.....

Good point! I wonder if that's been a factor in any of the injuries...

In the bad old days?  A fan dragged Nibali to his feet and stuck him back on his bike.  You could see in his face he was inconciderable pain, yet he still finished the stage.

Like.

I'm sure its occurred to them and they always have worn them in pockets but they are now a lot higher or off to the side, jerseys seem to be a lot tighter or some are wearing speed suits so there is less movement of material when you do it the deck

What I mean is that when I was a kid, a broken back almost always meant death or paralysis. Nowadays first-aiders know how to treat accident victims so we are hearing about many more people with potentially dangerous back fractures surviving with no long-term harm. My cycling buddy crashed badly recently and even though he had been sitting up dazed and bleeding for 45 minutes while waiting for the ambulance to find us, the crew insisted he laid down then fitted him with a neck brace and inserted a back board underneath him just in case of a break. 

More likely these sort of back breaks weren’t diagnosed. Remember Bert Trautmann.

I suspect the risk hasn't changed, and is still very small, but the training has much improved so paramedics know not to put someone back on their bikes. Roadside fans and the riders themselves aren't so hesitant.

Dan Martin fractured 2 vertebrae on stage 9 last year, finished the stage and the tour. I suspect in the good old days this sort of injury was quite common but rarely diagnosed 

But what part of the vertebrae did Dan Martin fracture?  Surely not a part that threatened the spinal cord?  Geraint rode last year's Tour with a fractured pelvis but actually it was a crack in the iliac crest so not "structural" as you might say. 

Having "broken my back" a few years ago, i would suggest that it encompasses a few different fractures, some more serious than others.

A friend bust one of the processes on a vertebra, the bit where a muscle attaches.  He was in agony but he left hospital that day with a box of painkillers.

I crushed a thorasic vertebra.  Stable fracture, so kicked out of hospital 2 days later with painkillers.

Another friend fell off a crag and blew two vertebra to bits.  That is probably what people think of as "breaking your back".  Said friend spent 17 wks in hospital and had several ops. And he could still climb better than me =D>

I guess that most of the tour riders have fractures like my first two examples, rather than the third.

Nibali got back on his bike and finished the stage...