I get a laugh when I see the Ron Cook clip on TV. Not from the crash which can't be any fun, but he claims he had it all under control during the crash.
When it all starts to go wrong, and it was a real tank slapper, he sat up. Sitting up at close to 200 mph is never a good idea, and it blew him off the back. As he goes off the back, it looks like his pants catch on the frame and he gets the slide-for-life treatment.
He claims on the video and on pureguts.com that he had it all under control from "years of experience".
. . .it was rapidly getting more pronounced and violent. My reaction was to tighten my grip on the handlebars and to apply more power to try and lighten the load on the front wheel so as to regain control of the severe headshake.
Most tank slappers are caused from doing just what he did. The speed wobble may have been started by outside forces, but it was made worse by tightening up on the bars. Humans just don't react fast enough to help, only to make it worse by over controlling. How do I justify this? The moment he let go, the bike snapped straight as an arrow and continued on as if it was still being driven. The bike carried on for . . .
Mike Mangelli and the other track workers picked up my bike about 1 or 2 miles away.
Ron is a heck of a competitor and still holds several records. But his lengthy discourse on how he handled the situation just strikes me as overblown.
Check his story and the video and see for yourself.
http://www.pureguts.com/sdm.asp?pg=stories&specific=1It also must have scrambled his brain. He says it happened at El Mirage at the top, and then Muroc later. Since he came back two weeks later, I would assume that Muroc must be correct.
Two weeks later no skill was involved. He said it was after the lights, so I would think he would have a timing slip, but in any case he got spit off big time and broke a bunch of stuff and destroyed the bike.
