HIDDEN MENACE

Have you ever heard of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)? It’s a bit of a mouthful but it might be time you got to know what it is and how it will almost certainly come to affect the sport we love. Head knocks are an unavoidable part of riding dirtbikes. We often dismiss them as having ‘rung our bell’ or in worse cases taking a dirt nap, and it’s usually laughed off as no big deal. There are more serious cases of course, but as racing fans we tend to just want to know when a rider will be back on the track and don’t think too much about the long-term consequences to their state of mind.

But recent studies have shown that CTE is something that can’t be ignored. Very simply, CTE occurs as the result of repeated brain trauma.