Extra-ordinary Pain – Perspective Gained!
by Erin Carter and Chris Reid July 13, 2007 – Pedal Magazine spoke with double Commonwealth Games medalist Travis Smith in early June to check in on his progress recovering from a bone shattering crash at the 2007 Track Worlds. Smith described his slow road to recovery with Erin Carter and soon after his name was popping up in results in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania. Clearly another catch up was needed so Chris Reid picke up where Carter left off and we spoke to Smith again to discover that while he was months ahead of his doctor’s predictions in terms of his recovery, but he was still taking thing’s day to day.
Part 1
One t-bone, two fractures, and many hours later Travis Smith is back on the road to Bejing.
“Everyone keeps saying wholly crap you’re healing fast,” says Travis Smith of Alberta, “but I keep saying wholly crap let’s get going.”
On March 30th, 27-year-old Smith was t-boned by another rider in the Keirin at the 2007 World Track Championships, crashed and felt a shooting pain in his hip and numbness down his leg. After the race, x-rays showed nothing ‘out of the ordinary’ so he was sent home and continued to walk on the leg only to have ‘extra-ordinary pain’ soon after.
“After about two weeks I could barely walk, so I went back to the hospital and had an MRI done,” said Smith, “and that’s when they discovered I had two fractures in the hip joint.” Smith says it didn’t really hit home that it was really bad until the doctor looked at him and said ‘you need surgery tomorrow.’
After many hours of surgery, where the doctors pulled the leg out of the hip socket and removed four fractured bits of bone, and after they had secured three screws and a plate into the hip socket Smith was free to go home. But not without a warning!
“Because of the nature of the hip joint, the doctors let me know that if I didn’t let it heal perfectly it could potentially be a career-ending injury,” said Smith, who was told he’d be on crutches for eight weeks and another six weeks before he could return to training.
For Smith the pain of not training and competing was worse than the physical pain. So to keep his mind off cycling he’s kept busy in other ways.
“After I realized I wouldn’t be able to go to Venezuela to compete at the Pan Am Road and Track Championships I went on a cruise to Mexico with my parents and my wife,” said Smith, “and since then I’ve been training in a different way.” Smith went on to explain that he’s been visiting a local physio clinic six days a week for 3-4 hours a day.
So far, Smith has impressed the doctors with his progress. They let him abandon the crutches after only five weeks and have allowed him to slowly return to cycling. He is already up to 55 minutes of continuous cycling, increasing his rides by ten minutes each trip.
“I’m pushing myself in every way I can,” said Smith, who has to wear two pairs of shorts when he rides for extra padding for his hip. “I told Cam (Mackinnon a team mate on the Canadian National team) that by next September I would be riding a 17.9 standing laps but every so often I wonder why the heck I said that.”
Smith says he has fluctuated between good and bad days. But that the bad days are fewer and fewer as his sights hone in on Beijing. “My goal is to make the Olympics in Beijing and to prove to everyone I can come back. I am refreshed and feel more motivated than ever before.”
Part 2
A month later Smith was still oscillating between good and bad days, though he admitted that some of the last few days had been very frustrating. “I’m way ahead of schedule, but in my mind sometimes I feel like everything should be fixed and it’s really frustrating.”
Smith had recently raced the flying 200m at UCI track events in Trexlertown, just to “see how far off I was. The answer was very, I’m lacking a whole lot of power. I have a lot of work to do before November.”
Smith had a meeting scheduled with the CCA to plan out his World Cup Track schedule for the coming season, in which he hopes to split his time between the National Team and his new pro-team Momentum, ideally riding two Track World Cups with each.
Smith commented that he didn’t want to abandon the team sprint program that he has anchored for the last several seasons, but that he needed to find out if there was still going to be a program. “What I’ve been hearing through the grave vine since the Pan Ams is that there is only funding for Prémont (Marie-Hélène) and Samantha Cools, and that if there is going to be a Team Sprint squad they need to find the money from somewhere else.”
Smith was clearly concerned over the possibility of cutting the program; “I was shocked to hear this, even after they did well. It’s crazy.” He wasn’t overly optimistic about the upcoming meeting, “The CCA can be political at times, I’m not sure what to expect given the various circumstances.”
Smith wasn’t surprised by his compatriot’s success at the Pan Ams in Venezuela. “I knew Cam (Mackinnon) and Yannick (Morin) had it in them, and it’s great to see a young gun like Lawrence (Leroux) stepping up. I’m really looking forward to getting back and riding with those guys.”
The conversation then turned to Smith’s new team Momentum Cycling. “Adam Duvendeck and I started it up, we held a sort of open house to attract some sponsors, and then passed on the management side of things to some friends of ours, to allow us time to focus on training.” Duvendeck was also instrumental in setting up the Focus 2004 Team in the lead in to the Atlanta Olympics that sent two members (himself included) to the games.
“It really came together when Look came on board. They’re giving us six track frames and six road frames, which is great for our team.”
The new team includes track standouts Jenny Reed of the US, and Malaysian rider Josiah Ng, in addition to Smith and Duvendeck.
The three male riders make a very strong team sprint squad if Smith returns to form in time for the season. The fielding of this mixed team could actually be a boon for Canada’s track UCI points, “It should be a very competitive team, and the points we score will just be divided up amongst the three nations, and any points scored as an individual go to that rider’s nation.”
One rider that Smith tried hard to bring onto the new team was long time friend and teammate Cam Mackinnon. “I tried really hard to convince Cam to come down to the States but he has a really good training environment in Burnaby working under Richard Wooles. I competed at the LA World Cup with Richard and he seems like a smart and experienced coach with a lot of knowledge, which is one of the biggest parts of any training environment. Cam can really benefit from a situation like that so I wasn’t going to try overly hard to try and convince him.”
In the immediate future Smith plans to race at T-Town in August, but with no serious goals, just as part of his continued training to his return to top level competition. However, UCI points are available and he’s hoping to snag some of them. After these races Smith will travel to the Canadian Track Nationals in September 6-9, in Dieppe, NB.
“It’s hard to say what my plans are for certain as its still so day-to-day right now,” he added. However Smith has returned far faster than his doctors expected, and is about two months ahead of their projections. “I’m trying to move along as fast as I can without anything going wrong, I have weekly x-rays done every time I add a new component to my training, and just the other day my surgeon gave me the green light to resume regular training.”
Most of the pain that Smith is currently dealing with is the result of scar tissue and soft tissue damage – the result of the 15-inch incision that doctors made to perform the surgery. The size of the incision prompted this writer to ask if he meant centimeters – but apparently the original unit (inches) was correct. All one has to do it look at international track sprinters to realize that there is a whole lot of muscle that is affected by a cut of that magnitude!
The result has been that Smith’s training has had, by his own admission, a “trial and error” feel to it; “I have to try out how a flying 200m, or a standing start feels and then work around it.” Smith hopes to be able to add more structure soon.
Based on how fast and how hard Smith has already worked to come back from his devastating injury one has the feeling its too soon to be counting him out of being at the start line when the Track World Cup season opens this November.
Best of luck Travis.
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