Simon Richardson Update (01/09/11)

Day 16.  Some further encouraging news today in that Simons oxygen levels are higher and he's had the staples removed from his stomach operation.  Medical staff are satisfied with progress, Simon is off the ventilator but still having assistance with oxygen to breathe.

He's still weak, well exhausted more like.  He's using a laptop to type messages to his wife Amanda, which is good.  He was absolutely delighted with the items from the Tour of Britain, which Amanda took to show him today - a real morale boost, thank you to everyone that helped make that happen.

Last night I attended a speed awareness course in Carrington, Manchester (jumped a traffic light on orange - hands up).  As part of the course, they talked about road collisions and the things you can do to reduce risk etc.  It took around four hours to complete, I thought about Simon a lot as the instructor talked.

Driver safety/awareness was covered, looking out for motorbikes was covered, yet looking out for cyclists wasn't, which I found really interesting given that 111 cyclists are killed a year; 2660 seriously injured; and 17,185 casualties are created as a result of road collisions in the UK.  We talked about eco-driving even and how to reduce carbon-footprints by driving more efficiently, blind spots, braking distances for trucks - yet no awareness for cyclists.

Think I feel a campaign coming on.....

Note to Press; Simon Richardson is a double-gold Paralympic cyclist.  On the track in Bejing 2008 he won the LC3/4 1km time trial and 3km individual pursuit. He also claimed a silver in the road time trial and assisted team mate Darren Kenny to victory in the road race.  Further details can be found on his Wikipedia page.