Michael Downes

I started racing triathlon in 2008 after my elder sister finished one and I was jealous. I'm a swimmer so I hadn't been on a bike since I was a child and I certainly didn't have any kit. Now I'm a little accident prone so a helmet was a must.... Since then I've had two hospital trips where my helmet prevented things from being a lot worse. The most recent of these was in June 2011.

I was racing at Ironman 70.3 in Somerset, my first attempt at this distance. The still waters at Wimbleball meant that the swim was uneventful and fairly easy, the bike however turned out a little different.

72km into the 90km bike leg I was preparing myself to take on the hilly section for the second and final time and thoughts were inevitably turning to the 13.1 mile run that was next.

I was on my own, the road was dry, there wasn't a sharp bend. In a nutshell I was minding my own business, I took a drink and as I was putting the bottle back my front wheel started to wobble, seconds later and I'm lying in the middle of the road having hit my head, shoulder and upper back pretty hard. The resulting injuries were a fractured collar bone, broken ribs and a punctured lung. Amazingly I was concious throughout despite my head taking the first part of the fall, Judging by the three cracks in my helmet things could have been alot worse.

I'm 3 months down the line and I now have a metal plate and 4 screws in my collarbone. I can't left my right arm above my head and don't expect to be able to swim again until early 2012. If it hadn't been for my helmet I'd have done similar damage to my skull and who knows what to my brain.

Helmets save lives!