It was a race in Pennsylvania that could have sent cyclist Phil Gaimon to the Tokyo Olympics; instead, a serious crash landed the Californian in two hospitals on the East Coast.
Gaimon knows accidents are, unfortunately, part of the sport. He had retired from competitive road cycling three years earlier, but a recruiting call came in spring 2019 from a coach of the USA Cycling track team.
The coach needed speed for a four-man event. At the time, Gaimon was making a name for himself, and money, by mountain racing and he was setting records.
"It was a dream come true," said Gaimon, 35. "A chance at a second career in racing."
But his Olympic dreams were short-lived. In a sprint with a pack of riders at the velodrome track in eastern Pennsylvania, Gaimon sailed over his handlebars after colliding with a fellow racer. Gaimon hit the ground hard. The result: a fractured collarbone, five broken ribs, a partially collapsed lung and a broken scapula — his worst injuries in the 10 years he had raced on pro road teams in the United States and Europe.
An ambulance whisked him to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is part of the health system that sponsored the cycling event. Emergency doctors admitted the athlete and he underwent surgery on his collarbone. He needed surgery on his scapula, too, which he said felt "like a collapsed taco." But that surgery would happen days later, after he was discharged from the Pennsylvania hospital and a friend helped him find a surgeon in New York.
He chronicled the whole ordeal on his social media channels, and soon he was recuperating — painfully, but successfully — back home. And then the bills came.
