During the Ylläs 24h race in 2019, around 2am I was heading down the Worldcup run at, I guess, at a bit over hundred kilometres an hour. And then something happened. I lost my skis, I tumbled, and hit myself to the icy slope pretty hard.
When I came about I was on lower on the slope, in full yard sale form. I collected a pole or two and sat down on the side of the slope. I thought I had broken something. But amazingly, I was just having some bad feelings from my back to head and the limbs, but nothing seemed to be broken. Also, my giant slalom racing skis were tuned for DIN 10, and I had not really known if they would open in a crash, as I usually keep my bindings at DIN 7 or 8. But they did, that's good news. Otherwise I might had broken a number of bones...
In a couple of minutes the race organisers showed up in their snowmobile and asked if I was ok. I said I was, and they gave me my skis from higher up. I skied very carefully down, and decided that I need to take a break and see if I'm really OK. I ended up visiting the sauna in the race facility, and watching the racers fly by in the darkness.
I also considered whether I should rejoin the race after that, but decided that it is better if I try to sleep a few hours.
But sleeping was difficult. There are several hotels in the area, but since I had thought I wouldn't need any, I started calling the hotels and found out that none of their receptions were 24/7. In the end, I slept maybe 6 hours in my car under a sleeping bag, occasionally waking up and heating it up the car a bit. It was a cold night.
In the morning I felt better and re-joined the race. This was my first crash in this race, though, having been there now four or five times.
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