Monday, December 24, 2007

Rhys Millen Injured in practice for Red Bull Backflip

We hope he has a fast recovery, these incidents are scary but I have to give him immense credit for having the balls to try something so revolutionary.

-Matt

From Race Dezert.com...

Keep Rhys Millen in your thoughts and prayers. He was injured today when his truck missed the padded landing area he was using. He was transported to a local trauma center for a complete evaluation and further care. I can not comment any further on his medical condition other then to say he was awake and oriented during transport.
Default Re: The Red Bull Experiment gone wrong!!!

I have talked to Tanner Rhys's room mate today. Rhys is out of it because of pain meds right now. He is on his way to a different hospital where he is in good hands for his injury. He has 4 fractured vertebrate all in the neck area. It is a compression fracture that is thought to be from the top tube of the roll cage pushing down on his head. His helmet has a crushed zone that matches a tube. The cause is just speculation not fact.
Rhys is getting the results of a MRI to see how bad the injury is or if he needs surgery. He has feeling and movement from what I have been told. They are just making sure there are no bone fragments in the spinal canal.
I will keep you guys posted of his condition. i will be visiting him tonight or in the morning.
Please keep Rhys in your prayers!
__________________
Jerry Zaiden

Jerry,
Thank you for updating our community. I was vague in my initial post because there are certain legalities about releasing peoples medical info without consent. I have received numerous request for info and did not want to overstep my bounds, so I kept the info discrete and to the point.

Please pass on to Rhys, that all of us from the fire department that responded to his accident are thinking of him.
"Apparently the kicker portion of the ramp failed. He launched the truck straight up, landing it on the tailgate area on pavement."

More from RDC
I will try to elaborate a little on this since we responded to the accident. As Jesse said, they had landed the flip numerous times and were just doing some tweaking and adjustments.

The kicker portion of the ramp failed to collapse. This in turn put the truck into a wheelie position. It remained in that position throughout the flight. It did not over rotate or go upside down. The added launch of the kicker caused the truck to fly farther then the safety landing area. The truck landed on pavement, past the safety area (actually clipped the last portion of the safety on the way down), on its rear bumper.

We cut away a portion of the tube chassis to aid in extraction. We did this to avoid further injury to Rhys, not because he was trapped. It just made it much easier to get him out and not further injure him.

search out the videos here on this site or you tube to see how the kicker works. It just did not release this time.....