But for a mechanical fault,
he would have won Finke in
a car as well, taking out the
Iron Man title
Photo: Brett Hemmings
TP: It doesn’t sound like much, but the body
is trying to repair the injury and it starts to
add up. Instead of repairing, other muscles
and parts start to suffer. By the end of
those 10 days it was really tough. The last
three days were very, very tough; they
were really hard where I had to push to put
myself into the position I needed to be in to
try and win it.
BM: I understand you had to ride sections
of the race using your left hand on the
throttle to try and give your broken hand a
rest. Is that true?
TP: The suicide grip? Yeah, it was like a
death wish pretty much. If I crashed doing
it I would have looked like an absolute idiot.
I was using my left-hand from time to time,
but only where it was smooth, or I could
see a way ahead. Not in the fesh-fesh – you
never know what’s underneath that stuff.
Yeah, so it worked good.
BM: This is not the first race you’ve won
with broken bones. You won the 2015
Finke with a broken ankle and foot. How do
you deal with that mentally? Are you able
to compartmentalise the pain, or do they
shoot you full of pain killers?
TP: No, I guess it’s pretty much down to
there’s not too much between the ears.
That’s about it, really. I don’t know, I just
like riding the bike and I hate missing
out on events. As soon as you throw that
helmet on, you know what you’re in for
and you know what you want to do. A part
of the brain can just switch it off. Yeah, it’s
uncomfortable and you know it’s there, but
when you’re doing 150-160km/h it takes
away a fair bit of the pain because you
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