People

Ouch! Tim Baillie’s broken collarbone

By CSNMarch 2, 2010

At the end of the last year Tim Baillie from Great Britain had an accident on mountain bike and broke his collarbone.

What happened exactly?
I was mountain biking near Nottingham on a very windy day. I went off a small jump and got blown sideways in the air; I landed squint and crashed off my bike. Immediately I thought it was Ok and my friend was laughing at me but then the right side of my chest/shoulder felt strange and as soon as I touched my collarbone I knew it was broken. There was a big square lump where my collarbone should be straight. Trying to move my arm confirmed it immediately as it was very painful. I went straight to Hospital and had some X-rays, which confirmed the damage, the collarbone was badly shattered. Two days later I had an operation to attach a metal plate to the collarbone and screw the bone fragments back together.

When was it?
I crashed on the 22nd November and had the operation on the 24th November ’09.

How long you couldn’t paddle or do any sport?
For the first 3 weeks I couldn’t do any training and then for another 3 weeks I could do very light CV training on an exercise bike but had to be careful not to disturb the collarbone. After 6 weeks I could begin to do harder CV training and some gentle exercise with my right arm but had to be careful still. After 10 weeks the bone is now strong enough to train properly but now it is difficult to build the training back up because my muscles are still quite weak and C2 is very physical.

How did you recover? With milk, exercising and physiotherapist?
Yes lot’s of Milk!! I was lucky to get the operation so quickly and this has helped the recovery a lot. We also have very good physiotherapy and nutrition/physiology support through the GB Team and so I was getting a lot of physio/massage and following a nutritional plan involving lot’s of milk, protein and also some vitamin supplements.

Now you can paddle as before or do you still have some pain and you can’t paddle 100%?
No I’m not back to paddling full strength yet. I have to be careful not to sustain other injuries since my muscles are quite weak still. We’ve been doing very basic technique work in Nottingham and now we’re in Australia and are still trying to do basic technique work. It’s more difficult here in Penrith since the whitewater is more intense but the sunshine helps. At home it’s difficult to avoid injury because you are so cold your muscles are tight, here it’s easy to be loose but you have to be creative to do basic paddling, dodging around the big features.

Your C2 partner, Ettiene, wasn’t upset about the break, that you couldn’t paddle few weeks?
Etienne was upset about the break but he was also philosophical about it, we’ve both had injuries before and understand the process. It’s very frustrating because in an instant when the accident happens all of your plans are changed. It would be nice to go back and change what has happened but that sort of thinking isn’t very useful. It’s important to understand the injury, the recovery process, make a new plan and then get on with it.

Or he was doing C1 while waiting for you coming back to boat?
Etienne decided to train in C1 whilst I was recovering since this seemed like the most useful training to do. We purchased a C1 between us for a very good price from Mark Delaney.

And you wasn’t afraid he will stay paddling C1 afterwards?
I wasn’t really afraid that he would stay in C1 afterwards because we discussed the recovery process and it was likely that it would only take me around 12 weeks to come back to a good level of fitness. This is much less time than it would take to become an elite C1 paddler since it takes a long time to develop the very specific skills and strength required for C1 paddling. We discussed the possibility of Etienne racing in C1 and C2 next season but decided that we were more interested in specialising in C2 since we still feel that we have a lot of improvements to make.

We wish Tim fast recovery and to be fit soon.