I've always been amazed that my dad has continued living his life as normally as he could after an accident that drastically reduced his mobility. I won't go into the details, but 40+ surgeries later, a number of skin grafts, and a handful of titanium rods, pins, and full-on bone replacements later, he's still doing as much as he can, and chased my brother and I around for as long as he could.
That same spirit I see in Talan Skeels-Piggins, who, twenty-plus years ago, suffered an unfortunate motorcycling accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Riders, however, no matter the circumstances, remain riders. We all still yearn for the open road and a motorcycle between our thighs. I recall my own bad crash ten years ago, when I got back on a motorcycle just two months after my shoulder, spine, and lungs had finally healed.
I, however, wasn't aiming to do 200mph. And I most definitely still had the use of my legs. Skeels-Piggins is a certified badass, as he doesn't and recently took a turbocharged custom Suzuki Hayabusa to 200 mph and consequently became the fastest paralyzed motorcyclist in the U.K.
Damn, that's cool.
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According to Motorcycle News, " Talan Skeels-Piggins achieved the record at Elvington Airfield just outside York on Saturday, September 19 – overcoming adverse weather and high winds to reach a recorded 200.254mph on his fifth and final run of the day aboard a turbocharged Suzuki Hayabusa."
200.254 mph is just flat-out fast as all hell. And to do so with bad weather, strong winds, and, again, no use of your legs, woof. That doesn't just take balls of steel, those suckers are likely titanium or marble or diamond. Tungsten, that's what they are. Heavy as all get up.
Speaking to MCN, Skeels-Piggins told the outlet, "I was really scared about doing it, and I nearly didn’t do it. I have had over the course of my racing career some pretty horrendous accidents. I shattered both my legs. I nearly lost my left leg. I split my pelvis, broke my sternum, lost a finger, broken my thumbs. It’s been really, really miserable and very tough to recover from them, especially as a paraplegic and you’re using your arms to get about."
He added, "It was the slowing down that I was most worried about, but the realisation was that I’d been wanting this for 11 years [and] when it came to the day, I decided that I would face my fear and I would give it a go."
Slowing down does seem like the more nerve-wracking portion, as when you're getting up to speed, you're just cranking the throttle and pointing forward. Once you start slowing down, there are more variables to get right and to keep the motorcycle upright. Think about it, and especially think of how you use your legs to keep everything stable. You're keeping it tight and secure, but if you don't have it, you're at a real detriment when you're just keeping everything stable through the bars.
Any way you cut it, though, Skeels-Piggins did something rad as hell, and I salute him, as well as the team that helped him face his fears and achieve what he did.
