Remembering a Race to the Finish : Cyclist Recalls Fatal Crash a Year Ago at the Velodrome

The race began at 7:30 on a muggy September evening. Four three-story banks of lights cast angular shadows across the Encino Velodrome track as competitors took their positions for the night’s second three-lap match sprint.

Mark Garrett drew the outside lane. Rod Ballard started on the inside. The two had met many times, and Garrett usually won. They neither liked nor disliked each other, according to Garrett. “There was just no chemistry there at all,” he said last week from his home in San Jose. “I get much more pleasure out of beating a friend than someone I don’t care about.”

Garrett did not win that evening, however, because his opponent suffered a mortal fall 60 yards before the finish line.

On Saturday night, racers gathered at the velodrome to remember Ballard, whose death three days after being injured last Sept. 7 was followed within months by a new U.S. Cycling Federation rule requiring the use of hardshell helmets in amateur races. But Garrett, 23, doesn’t need a special date to recall Ballard’s death. A year later, vivid memories of the night still cycle ceaselessly through his mind.

He recently decided to talk publicly about them for the first time.

“We started at a walking pace, a slow lap and a half,” Garrett said. “It was very clean and he was about a half a bike’s length ahead of me. I was right on his wheel. He started to wind the pace up faster and faster. As we were going out of turn 2 into the back straight, I took the initiative and went underneath him. And at the same time, he tried to dive down to outsprint me. I didn’t want him in front of me going into turn 3. The person ahead going into that turn has the advantage.

“As we went into turn 3 we were even, and we kept it that way all the way. We were going fast, no doubt. But I was not at top end. Had I really been at top speed, I could’ve outsprinted him to the finish line. But I didn’t because I was conserving my energy for more sprints later that night.”

The closer a rider gets to the bottom of the track, the shorter his race. Consequently, match racers crowd together as they finish turn 4 and sprint the final straightaway, their bodies and fragile machinery touching.

“Rod kept creeping in inch by inch at turn 4, and I myself felt very little contact,” Garrett said. “It was just a slight brush. Our pedals probably clipped, though I’m not sure exactly what contact there was. When he hit me it jarred him and his bike went straight from under him and he came off backward and fell right off on the back of his head.

“I heard the impact. One of his tires exploded, and that’s what I heard most. He hit and you could hear the thump. But I didn’t see it, only heard it. I didn’t know it was his head on the ground. People go down all the time. It isn’t that big a deal.”

Garrett then took a lazy warmdown lap around the track.

“When I got to turn 1, I looked back and saw him laying motionless,” Garrett said. “I thought he was just hurt, and came back around. But when I looked down at him, his eyes were turned to the back of his head and fluttering, and I knew it was all over for him. I told everybody that.”

Garrett leaned his bike against a rail and sat near the finish line. He was shaking and he closed his eyes.

“It was a no-fault thing, everyone agrees,” he said. “But match sprinting is a contact sport. . . .

“A couple of friends walked up the track to where I was sitting and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, he’s going to be fine.’ And I said, ‘No way. He’s going to die.’ It was a strange thing. While I knew it wasn’t my fault, that it was just part of the game, I was terribly shaken up. It was worse than anything that had ever happened to me in bike racing.”

The very worst thing, Garrett said, was the impossible sight of Ballard’s twisted body lying practically still beside his bent bike as the sound of an ambulance siren grew closer to the track.

“It was very sad,” Garrett said. “He wasn’t even conscious. There was an awful lot of blood, it was running across the apron into the grass. He’d also punctured his lung, a rib was sticking through his chest and his breathing sounded like a train. It sounded very eerie.”

Ballard, who died three days later at a hospital, was wearing a “hair net” that night, a light leather helmet that ruins a nice hairdo but does virtually nothing to protect a racer’s head from injury. Garrett was also not wearing a “hardshell” helmet--made from a highly impact-resistant, relatively heavy plastic--but bought one the next day. He wishes that Rod had worn one that night, but does not believe the federation should have made its use mandatory.

The hair net is an integral part of cycling lore. Most European racers wear it. For many riders, it is an emblem of macho, a sign to fellow racers that one is confident, brazen, experienced.

“What if tomorrow they say you have to wear elbow pads, knee pads and a knee brace?” Garrett said. “Where does it stop? They say it’s for your own good, but if it were put to a vote, the vast majority of racers wouldn’t have gone along. It goes against the whole idea of aerodynamic skin suits and ultralight bikes.

“The sport is inherently dangerous. If they really want to make it safe, they will have to cut out the whole sport. It’s like football or motor racing. It’s a sport of speed and a sport of danger.”

A week after Ballard died, it was a sport that Garrett could hardly stand. Many racers went directly from Ballard’s funeral to the Encino Velodrome for a night of racing. Garrett imagined he could join them, but suddenly found himself going home rather than to the track.

“I thought it wouldn’t bother me,” he said. “But I just couldn’t do it. The next week, I still felt weird, but I did race. The skid marks were still there, and they stayed there for a long time, which was real eerie.”

No other racers at the velodrome, apparently, believe Garrett should feel guilty for the accident. Larry Hoffman, a regular at the track, was not at the velodrome the night of the crash. Because he was a close friend of Ballard, however, he said he talked to a lot of people who were there.

“Garrett is noted for being an aggressive rider, so I was curious as to whether anyone said that he had anything to do with the accident,” Hoffman said. “In the powerful riders’ competition, there is sometimes a little bumping and shoving--a little intimidation. But that isn’t what happened this time. Garrett had position, and someone who has position doesn’t have to do anything aggressive. I didn’t hear of anyone saying he did anything wrong.”

Garrett, who declined an invitation to attend the memorial race Saturday because of the travel expense, said that the Encino track has at least one mildly unsafe feature. It is a small track, he said, that is not banked steeply enough to force the tall, heavy racers into the safest possible riding posture. Yet the track is fully certified and there has not been a life-threatening accident for a year.

Riders accept its challenge, and Garrett, who has moved north and will graduate in December from San Jose State, likewise accepts the passage of time as the salve for his memories.

“To this day, especially when I’m there, I think if I had only gone a little harder he’d still be alive,” Garrett said. “But as time goes on, it kind of fades away. It’s all part of the game.”