The bike he was riding was a tamer version of the YZ400. The YZ was a full-on motocross bike, while the MX wasn't really meant for racing.
It would have been pretty scary jumping 22 cars on a bike like that and on wedge ramps like that. I was surprised at how he sat on the seat during the transition onto the ramp, and how he wasn't just jolted with massive spinal compression as he transitioned. It looked pretty smooth.
His timing was a little off, which can happen when you're hitting a ramp fast. If you're only on a ramp for 1/2 a second or 1/3 a second, timing is critical and it's easy to be slightly off. Once he left the ramp, the front end was coming up, and he gassed it, which brought it even higher. He was probably unfamiliar with pulling the clutch and dragging rear brake while airborne to bring the front end down, so the front end just kept rising until the forks were pointing to the horizon. He overjumped the landing and clipped the far end of the landing ramp, but not enough to soften the landing at all. He basically flatlanded while looping out.
As the front end came down, his body was too far back, and once his arms reached full extension, the front end was still airborne and the bike continued to rotate forward and down around the rear axle. The bars were ripped from his hands, as it usually happens in cases like this, and like it happened to Evel at Caesars (no apostrophe, remember). Once your arms reach full extension and the front end is still coming down, you're going to get whiplashed and have the bars ripped from your hands, and you'll fall off the back of the bike or get bucked over the bars. Luckily, Dick fell off and his crotch didn't get sucked up by the rear tire, which would have ended badly as he would have wound up racked against the triangulated swingarm and lower shock mount with the tip of a rear fender in his adam's apple.
It might have hurt him some to land and get spinal compression and whiplash, and his forearms might have been strained because of the bars getting ripped out of his hands, but the crash itself after he fell off probably didn't hurt him much.
Thanks a bunch for posting the footage here, it was certainly a learning experience to view it!
JA
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