Rastrick down, might be out

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 34

Rastrick down, might be out

William Rastrick’s participation in the Canterbury track cycling championships next week-end is in serious doubt since the accomplished sprinter was bruised and bloodied in a high-speed crash on the Chandler Velodrome in Brisbane on Sunday. Rastrick is in hospital with a badly grazed body, stitches in a forehead wound, and a jaw injury which made speech difficult.

But the damage might have been worse.

After the graunching three-man tangle involving Rastrick, a Welshman, Steve Paulding, and an Australian, Scott McGrory, the Christchurch rider ap-

parently stopped breathing briefly, and bled from mouth and nose. There were fears of a fractured skull.

But the gritty Rastrick was fighting back yesterday, despite his sore and swollen body.

The smash was the third in which he has been involved in the last eight months. The others occurred en route to, and at, the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh last year.

Rastrick won the national sprint championship on the Denton oval track last March, upsetting the four-times title winner, Mike Mcßedmond, of Manawatu.