The crash had seemed innocuous, remembers Xavier Disley. “I was riding along in the group and we came off a long section of sand towards a different sector,” he relives the Battle on the Beach off-road race in South Wales from April 2022. “It all bunched up on the uphill and I didn’t unclip in time because someone slowed down in front of me. I went sideways and toppled into the grass.” There was no sign of any injury. “I didn’t think anything of it and finished the event,” he says.
Twenty-four hours later, however, and back home in the Malvern Hills, Disley began to feel some strange sensations. “On my bike, my back didn’t feel quite right. I had an open TT on the Saturday, and come the weekend my leg and back were so messed up that I was in too much pain to race.” Unbeknown to Disley, owner of Aerocoach and one of the country’s foremost cycling aerodynamics experts, he would never again ride a bike without discomfort. An apparently minor tumble had permanently damaged him.
