Acute injuries in cross-country and downhill off-road bicycle racing.

This study was conducted to investigate injury patterns at three major off-road bicycle races in the Western United States in 1995. All cyclists forced out of the cross-country (CC) and downhill (DH) competitions due to injury were examined and interviewed. The overall injury rates were 0.49% (20/4074) for the CC and 0.51% (11/2158) for the DH event. In the CC there were 0.37 injured cyclists for every 100 h of racing time versus 4.34 injured cyclists/100 h in the DH (P = 0.01). Injury rates in the CC were higher for women than for men (1.05% vs 0.40%, P = 0.04; 0.75/100 h vs 0.31/100 h, P = 0.01). Injured CC cyclists who fell forward over their handlebars had higher mean injury severity scores (3.0 vs 1.3, P = 0.01) and required more emergency room visits (6/100 vs 1/10, P = 0.02) than cyclists who fell off their bicycles (5/6 vs 5/14, P = 0.05) and were taken to the hospital (4/6 vs 3/14, P = 0.05) more often than men. These data suggest that 1) the risk of being injured during a race is similar in the CC And DH events, 2) the long-term risk may be greater to DH racers than to CC competitors, 3) the severity of injury is greater when a CC cyclists falls forward off the bicycle, and 4) women CC competitors are more likely to fall forward off their bicycles and be injured than men.