State of Play: Broken

I am not much of a TV watcher and when I do decide to watch TV there is never anything good on anyway. (What ever happened to Seinfeld??) Last night I sat down determined to find something good to watch. I ended up choosing an HBO documentary called State of Play; Broken. It tells the story of two athletes who sustain catastrophic injury doing their sport and the aftermath of the injury.

One of the athletes is a football player who injures his spinal cord who went from being a future NFL player to being confined to a wheelchair and being paralyzed from the neck down. A very very sad story

The other athlete is a Mountain Bike rider who took a fall over a 4 foot drop at Moab. He hit his head hard and has also been paralyzed from the neck down. He sips or puffs on a straw to move his wheelchair. There is a scene at the start of the film where he is describing what happened while talking to a fellow rider and everything he says is completely relate-able and I could easily picture all this and it really freaked me out. In fact, I had to turn it off, it spooked me so much. He’s just Joe Average who loved to ride.

If anyone is interested in watching it, it is available on Bell. Here is a clip from the show:

Yeah, I had to turn it off too.

Sh*t happens… whether it’s crashing on your bike or falling down the stairs… you do what you can to stay safe and hope that something drastic doesn’t happen.

A life without risks would be bland indeed. Smart risks is the way to go.

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