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Bad timing!

Posted on July 24, 2012 in Phil Jennings   

Well for anyone that hasn’t seen Facebook or heard on the grapevine, things took a bit of a turn for the worse over the weekend.

I’d only flown twice in nearly 4 weeks and I was desperate to get training for the upcoming Slalomania events in France and the World championships in Spain. So when we suddenly had the improvement in the weather I was straight out there. The biggest problem was all the fields round by me had grass up to my knees so it took me a while to find a suitable take off site and somewhere to set up the pylons. This meant that I wasn’t ready to start flying until near midday which meant the risk of thermic air, this turned out to be my biggest mistake.
I had only done about 6 turns around the pylons when just as I came out of a turn and onto the speedbar I took a 30-40% right asymmetric collapse. I was only 5 or 6 meters up so had no time to recover and ended up crashing in hard on both feet. Thankfully I had a spectator so help was straight there. I unclipped from the harness and just lay on my back hoping that I was unhurt, but as soon as I tried to stand up I new I was in trouble. I got a lift back home and then straight to A&E to get checked out. Maybe I was trying to kid myself but I just though it’s only a bad sprain and I’ll be fine. Anyway 1 hour later after x-rays it turns out I have fractured my left and right talus (ankle bone) and right tibia. I couldn’t believe it, with only 4 weeks to the Worlds and 1 week to Slalomania I had just thrown all this years hard work away…Gutted!

Well, after 3 rather unpleasant nights in hospital I’m home. Both legs are in plaster below the knee and I can’t put any weight on them for 6 weeks. So it’s a wheelchair for transport, sleeping downstairs and lots of sitting around, not really something I’m used to doing.

So whilst I’m laid up writing this here is my advice.

Don’t get carried away when the weather suddenly improves, think is it really a good time to fly now, are the conditions safe? Should I wait till later in the day?

If you have a pair of decent supportive boots wear them! I always fly in trainers because they are comfortable, but thankfully the grass was wet that day so I went back and put on my Hanwags. I can say for sure that without these my injuries would of been a lot worse.

Fly safe fellow pilots, enjoy the summer and I’ll see you I the air as soon as I can walk again!

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