My bionic face: How surgeons rebuilt Sir Steve Redgrave after his bike crash
By Sue MottLast updated at 3:56 PM on 20th July 2010
Sir Steve Redgrave after his cycle crash
Last month, he embedded his face in the tarmac of a town in Maryland, USA. The dent to the road is undoubtedly still there. That was 18 stone of sporting knight hitting the deck. It would not have escaped lightly.
Neither did Redgrave, who returned home a week later when his suspected concussion had subsided, with a badly broken cheekbone, three cracked ribs, a double-break in his wrist and a dislocated finger.
He had simply fallen off his bike. It had never happened before - and, unfortunately, it occurred in the tantalisingly close moments of a non-stop cycle race across America only 200 miles from the finish line.
He was part of The Redgrave Crew, an eight-man relay cycle team of ex-rowers, competing............
in the infamously strenuous RAAM Race, a 3,040-mile dash from California to Maryland, which only the tough survive.
Yet there he was surviving, aged 48 and diabetic, until he was hit by that most prosaic of misfortunes - a puncture.
'It happened very quickly but I clearly remember thinking, "I'm going down." There was an impact. I don't think I blacked out but my vision was extremely blurred and I became aware that various bits of me were hurting.
'I could see my finger pointing in a different direction. Blood was dripping from my face into the road.
'Oddly, there wasn't a scratch on my hips and only a minor scrape on my legs. "Well, if you will use your face to stop yourself, you don't need your hips," said one of my teammates, unhelpfully.'
He thought he had smashed his teeth but it turned out to be just a mouthful of grit. He was taken on a stretcher to hospital where he was dosed up with morphine before the familiar and now ritual task of letting his wife know the extent of his injuries.
Face off: One month after the accident, Sir Steve's facial injuries are healing
She studied the X-rays and CAT scans sent from the States and sent word that he would need an immediate operation on his cheekbone when he returned home.
Propped up in his hospital bed, Redgrave contemplated the news that surgeons would have to operate through his right eyebrow, lower eyelid and the roof of his mouth to repair the multiple fracture and to avoid the fragile nerves in his cheek.
'I didn't mind the eyebrow but I didn't fancy the rest of it. It sounded like my eyeball might fall out and I certainly didn't like the idea of the roof of my mouth being opened up.
'I was in enough pain already. The thought of the inside of my mouth being stitched wasn't very nice.' He had a cogent reason for this. 'Not if you like your food,' he said.
On his return, Redgrave saw a consultant at the Chiltern Hospital who reassured him that it was a common injury ('a fractured right zygomatic arch') and footballers who play in face masks have invariably suffered the same fate.
The consultant suggested three options. The first was to push out the depressed bone bridge above the cheekbone, which was broken in three places. The problem-with this was that it was unlikely to remain stable.
Option two involved an incision from the bottom of the right ear and round the hairline, peeling back the face and inserting a titanium plate held in place by screws. The third option was an incision virtually from ear to ear over the top of the head, peeling back the face even further, and the insertion of two titanium plates, one above and one below the cheekbone.
'It was the second,' he says with relief, now sporting a neatly stitched 6in scar in the shape of a back-to-front question mark around the rim of his face.
It thoroughly intrigued his fellow gold medallist and long-time team mate Sir Matt Pinsent, when they met at the Henley Royal Regatta last weekend.
'I'd told him about the op and how they were going in through my hairline, so when he saw me he said, "Oh I was expecting the scar to be on your back." That was his idea of a joke. My hairline is receding but not that much.'
'It's a very difficult area to reach because the facial nerve, which controls the movement of the upper lip and the eye, runs right above the affected area. So I had to tunnel in from above.
'An incision was made from the front of the ear up into the hairline and a large area of skin was flapped back - a method akin to "scalping".
'I was then able to tunnel down and attach a titanium plate 2mm in diameter to the fractured area, which was screwed in place by four screws, all 4-5mm long. The plate is essentially a splint that allows fractured bone to heal. It becomes redundant after six weeks, when the healing is complete, but will stay in place for life.'
Lady Redgrave helped diagnose her husband's injuries
'The titanium plate is tiny, but one of the screws is surprisingly big. They will stay there for life. I'll be setting off airport security everywhere I go from now on.'
The question remains why anyone with the most unblemished record in elite sport on water would submit themselves to the cruel horrors of day/night cycle racing on hard roads. Known as 'The World's Toughest Cycle Race' - a one-stage, start-to-finish, clock-never-stops pelt across America, taking in mountain climbs, sheer descents and rush-hour traffic - constituted an irresistible lure to Redgrave. 'It was the challenge,' he says.
Ten years after winning his fifth gold medal in Sydney, he felt the urge to test himself again and so found himself on the start line in Oceanside, California, among a group of 11 fellow teams in the eight-man relay event.
'I was chatting to one of the other competitors. He laughed and said, "You'll never guess, we've got a guy who's never done a cycling race before." I felt I had to tell him that we'd got seven who'd never done it before.
' "Oh," he said, "You're just out for a Sunday morning cycle race across America, are you?" "Yeah, something like that," I replied.
'Then the announcer said, "Next up The Sir Steve Redgrave crew, including Sir Steve himself, the five times Olympic gold medallist."
'My new friend did a double-take. "Wha'? Wha'? Which one is he?" "The fat one on the end you've been talking to," someone told him.'
After the first day, to Sir Steve's infinite disgust, Redgrave's team were lying ninth. But the following day the dormant Olympian virtues of competitiveness, brute force and teamwork reasserted themselves and they reeled in team after team so that by the time of the accident five days later, they were in fifth.
'It turned out that the race isn't really a cycle race at all. It's about the logistics of transporting 18 support crew, support vehicles and eight cyclists to the right place at the right time.
'Everyone was just knackered. The original idea was that we would divide into two four-man cycling teams and pedal for six hours, while resting for six hours as we were driven to the next rendezvous point.
'But I was getting less than two hours sleep in every 24 and when we reached Maryland we missed our rendezvous point.
'Our other team had to cycle on for another two hours while we tried to catch them up. Then I took over from someone on my team who couldn't go far because he'd lost his shoes and was riding someone else's bike.
'First I took a wrong turn and then, on the way back, was so hemmed in by traffic I toppled over between a car and the kerb. It was minor.
'I jumped back on the bike but the brakes were skewwhiff and my seat wasn't straight. It didn't matter. I carried on but as I went round the next right-hand bend at a sedate 10mph my front wheel slid one way and I went the other, head-first.
'That was the end of my race. Looking back, I reckon I'd got a slow puncture from that first collision with the kerb.
'I told the guys through the grit, "Make sure you carry on. I want you to finish."
'But they got lost after a few hundred yards and everyone decided just to shut down our race at that point. We stopped for 17 hours. I was in hospital and slept the next 44 of 48 hours.
'They resumed the next morning and finished the race in seven days, three hours and 42 minutes. We came eighth.'
Two unfortunate discoveries have been made since returning home. One is that his wrist break is serious, possibly involving damaged cartilage, and could contribute to future problems with arthritis. The other is that sneezing is hell.
'The worst, worst, thing in all this is sneezing with broken ribs. I sneezed on the first day I was back home. Ann was in the garden watering the flowers, my daughter Sophie was in another room. I sneezed. Suddenly everyone was rushing in, shouting, "What's wrong, what's wrong? " I'd screamed. I'd braced myself. I'd known it would be painful but nowhere near as painful as it was.'
So will he ever get back in the saddle? 'I've never fallen off a bike before. I'm not sure whether I've lost my confidence.' He pauses. 'On the other hand, I do think we could do it a lot quicker. But I wouldn't rule out doing it in an eight again... or maybe a four.'
Lady Redgrave was not within hearing range at the time. Had he broached the subject with her - that her husband, with diabetes, colitis, a titanium plate, facial scar and innumerable healing bones - might be planning to cross America again on a bike?
' I haven' t spoken about it,' he says truthfully. 'When I've decided, I ' l l tell her.'
To make a donation to the Sir Steve Redgrave fund, visit www. justgiving.com/redgrave raceacrossamerica.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1295528/Sir-Steve-Redgrave-My-bionic-face.html#ixzz0unCi9AJw
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