Stay Strong Stephen Murray

So I never really talked about this too much when it happened, apart from with my brothers, but earlier in the year, Stephen Murray, one of the best BMX dirt jumpers in the world had a pretty serious crash while performing on the Mountain Dew Tour up in Baltimore.

When I say pretty serious, it was close to being life ending, and he was out for a week, totally paralyzed and couldn't speak when he came around. Although it hasn't been that long since it happened, he's been making some great progress, so I'm posting the videos of his TV interview here if you're interested.

Back in the day (and I mean a really long time ago - like over 20 years ago), we all used to go racing together. Stephen and his brother Martin were good mates with Daniel, and they had a camper van, so he used to crash in that when we all went down to the Nationals, or some other big race (me and my Dad slept in the car with the front seats flat out). All 3 of them were way better racers than I was, even though they were still less than 8 or 9, and Stephen was pretty crazy even then, but we were all founding members of The Tyneside Chargers BMX Club (which incidentally had the most hideous tops you can ever imagine - red with yellow sleeves, and some dodgy shiny material - still makes me shudder).

Anyway, the main point of this is that he's kinda screwed given he lives in the US, has a wife and kid, and for some unknown reason, the riders on the tour weren't covered with health insurance. So, there's a fund if anyone feels like putting up some cash, or just buying a t-shirt.

Stay Strong Mate, and when you get better, you need to work on getting that Geordie accent back ;-)