By Steve Medcroft
Australian women’s National Mountain Bike Cross Country Champion Emma Colson (Topbike Tours - Giant) says she feels glad to be alive after colliding head-on with a motorcycle on an evening training ride in Livigno, Italy prior to Sunday’s World Championships race.
Colson was in Livigno as part of the Australian National Team. In an email to CyclingNews, Colson says she was riding at the edge of a narrow road when “(the motorcycle driver) pulled out to overtake a car on the far right side of the road.” Colson says she was “pretty much in the gutter” herself and swerved to avoid the collision. "But he went the same way and I flew over the top of the bars.”
Colson says she is suffering knee pain and swelling but was spared head injury thanks to her helmet, which is now “all smashed up." Recovering, Colson was using crutches to keep the pressure off her injured leg just three days before the World Championship race. “I think I will start on Sunday,” she added. “Unless it’s very wet and requires a lot of running.”
Colson did start, and placed sixty-second in the event.
