April 2018: I’m on the ground. Full of dirt. Trying to catch my breath, stay calm and not lose consciousness. That was a hard impact! One of the ugliest crashes I ever had. But I was lucky – I did not smash into the rocks face first and somehow made it onto the right side of my body before a brutal impact after a 12 meter flight over the bars. Everything hurts as fuck. Most of all my upper body… In that moment, Seb is coming to look after me and also our guide Marco is trying to help. I don’t want to talk, I just need a moment to sort myself out and get back to my feet. Breathing is hard, my leg is shaking and my hand doesn’t feel good either. The heavy rain comes back, I need to get down from this mountain quickly and back to my van, back into civilization to see a doctor. I don’t know what’s going on but I feel like I got beaten up by a MMA fighter. I managed to roll down the rest of the slippery trail and to the car. I lay down on the back seat trying to hold tight while Seb is driving the Syncro down over the rough 4×4 tracks back down to Terras the Bouro and straight to the hospital of Braga.
The doctors didn’t seem too interested and let me wait while I was still shaking and breathing hard… After an hour I stood up and left to go to a private hospital – at least to get the x-rays done and a check that I don’t have any internal bleeding. Luckily, no organs got damaged and I had no broken ribs. Only a broken wrist and a bruised diaphragm from the heavy impact that shook all my organs.
Well, this is not how I planned the start of my road trip through Portugal. Too much excitement, too much fun on these heavily flooded trails and too much speed… I didn’t see it coming but this is what happens sometimes. Driving back to Germany wasn’t an option, so with the help of our Guide Marco from In Nature and the guys from WeRide I was able to leave my car and my bikes in Portugal for the time to heal up and return as soon as possible.