In possibly a first in international mountain biking, Liam Killeen finished the
World Marathon Championships at the weekend, despite a mid race visit to the
hospital to receive stitches!
Words from Specialized's Bobby Behan below:
Now to the rather story unique story of the day: Between feeds 1 and 2 (i.e.
between the 20km and 50km mark) Liam Killeen crashed pretty bad on one of the
descents. He was in the lead group and was feeling good. I was located at feed
2, while Liam?s mum Kay was at feed three (67km mark). A medic loaned Liam his
phone and Liam phoned Kay to say that he was OK, but needed some stitches, but
he would continue. While the leaders flew through feed 2, I remained and
remained and waited some more ? Kay called to say he was OK and was continuing!
Finally, a motorcycle arrived and I asked "Where's 98 ? Killeen?" He had no
English and I no German, but we agreed on "fini" and "hospital". I was not
concerned because I suppose after the phone call was relieved to know Liam was
OK and I figured he would be back at the truck with a few stitches to keep him
together! I soldiered on to feed 4 (80km point) to support Susi who was at the
front in a battle with Leonardo Paez and Roel Paulissen.
That night at team dinner we got the full Liam story and it made us all laugh!
Liam?s mum turned up at the hospital to find Liam following Susi?s finish. "Is
number 98 here?" she called and the reply was....."he is racing". This did not
make sense!
So Liam got a lift to the hospital where he needed 7 stitches and some bandages
to his shoulder, all superficial, which was good. There was a queue of weary
mountain bikers, but Liam managed to skip the queue by saying that he was still
racing!! What the hell he was talking about, I am sure the medic was not sure,
but further up the queue it was for Liam. All bandaged and stitched up, Liam
got a lift from the same volunteer who brought him to the hospital back to the
exact point where he crashed. At this point he was a least an hour down, but
Liam jumped back on his bike and finished....
We all asked, did you catch anybody and to all of our surprise Liam said I
passed quite a few!!! What went through Liam?s head when he crashed......"Susi
would continue, so I am going to continue". Liam.......RESPECT. Liam finished
85th of 101 finishers!!
Date:
07/07/2008