Christopher Blevins watched the mud-drenched South Korea World Cup race from an airplane seat on a flight bound for California. A routine crash the day prior to the season opener left him with a broken collarbone and a shattered early season, but the American standout is back on the start line this weekend in Switzerland.
“I had a great off-season,” Blevins said in an interview with Escape Collective this week. “I felt like my goal for the start of the year was to kind of like build and just keep gaining fitness up to a strong second half of the season.”
That plan was derailed with a trip to South Korea that is memorable for all the wrong reasons. Stomach problems preceded a 28th place finish in short track on Friday before a Saturday practice session on the XCO course turned south.
Blevins said he was testing out mud tires, preparing for the next day’s forecast. The slight difference in ride feel compared to dry tires caused him to wash out the front of his bike in a corner. It was the type of crash that he would normally quickly jump up from unscathed.
“I wouldn't have even told my team—mechanic or coach—that I had crashed,” Blevins said. “I had no scrapes, no bruises, but just tucked the shoulder in a way where the impact … I just knew immediately I needed surgery and the collarbone was broken.”
Ironically, the Blevins family has no shortage of medical knowledge. Field Blevins, Christopoher’s father, is a retired orthopedic surgeon, and his sister Kaylee just entered residency at the University of Colorado.
It was a race to find an available doctor to operate on Blevins’ left clavicle and to start the recovery process. USA Cycling connected Blevins with a surgeon at Stanford, who performed the surgery on the Tuesday after the crash.
Five days later, Blevins was riding the trainer and reveling in the chance to watch the NBA playoffs from America rather than battling the time difference from Europe. Two weeks after the surgery, he was back to riding outside.
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