Reporter: Ben Fordham
Producer: Hugh Nailon
You're about to see something that'll stop you in your tracks — one incredible moment that almost cost young Chris Barlow his life.
At 20, Chris was a bit of a daredevil, heavily into mountain bike racing, tearing through the bush, flying off ramps over gullies. The hairier, the better.
Then one day, it all went pear-shaped. Chris ploughed headfirst into a tree and, amazingly, his mates captured it all on video — not only the accident, but the events that followed, the heroic efforts to save his life, making this report by Ben Fordham the good news story of the year.
Transcript
BEN FORDHAM: It's called free riding — an extreme form of mountain biking that leaves
BMX Bandits for dust. It's madness. But, despite the obvious risk, it's the hottest of extreme sports. Founded in North America, it's swept the globe and didn't take long to catch on here. For 20-year-old Chris Barlow and his mates Pete, Dave and DJ, it's more than just a sport — this is the ultimate high.
CHRIS BARLOW: You just come off and you're just in the air, and, I don't know, the air time feels like ever.
PETE: Once you start you can't stop, you know. Like, being out here in the middle of nowhere, there's just nothing — nothing beat it.
BEN FORDHAM: One day last winter their lust for adventure brought them deep into the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The adrenaline junkies spent six hours building the mother of all jumps. It was bigger, higher, longer than anything they'd ever jumped, making one helluva home video. Pete and Dave, the more experienced riders, went first.
PETE: We did about half a dozen times each, and Chris was walking up and down, just psyching himself up, as you do. And, all of a sudden, he's on top of the ramp, he's like 'Righto, going to do it'.
CHRIS BARLOW: It was like sort of like a goal that, 'If I don't do this now, this is it, I'm not going to do it', so I had to just hit it. 'If they can do it, I can do it'.
DJ: I just pressed 'record' and I literally had no time — he was in the zone, he was ready to go, nothing was going to faze him.
CHRIS BARLOW: I was standing on top of this ramp yelling out to the boys 'Boys, I'm ready, I'm going to do it'.
BEN FORDHAM: And this was your first go at the jump?
CHRIS BARLOW: First go, yeah.
PETE: Woah! Are you right, dude?
DAVE: Call an ambulance.
BEN FORDHAM: This is the tree that Chris hit. Just imagine smashing into this at 70km/h. Fortunately, it was his shoulder that took most of the impact. If he had have hit it head-on, he would have died instantly. But somehow, Chris Barlow was meant to live. Do you remember being flat on your back next to the tree?
CHRIS BARLOW: Yeah. And I remember lying there, closing my eyes, and then Pete telling me, 'You're going to be alright'. I said 'Shh, just be quiet, I'm not going to be alright, and I'm stuffed'. That was one thing that kept going through my head, 'This was stupid, this was stupid'.
BEN FORDHAM: DJ, you kept filming?
DJ: Yeah, well, at the time when it happened I thought, 'You don't often get to see this sort of stack', so I kept filming and just documented it as it happened.
CHRIS BARLOW: I knew I needed the ambulance there, and I just kept asking him, 'When's the ambulance here? Ring them back, tell them to hurry up'.
BEN FORDHAM: They were in the middle of nowhere, a long way from help but, luckily, their phone worked. Paramedic Guy Blanchard was first on the scene.
GUY BLANCHARD: We looked up at the jump and it scared the daylights out of us when we first looked at it. We just looked at it and went, 'Wow, this bloke's probably done some major damage'.
BEN FORDHAM: His blood pressure had plummeted, he had severe internal injuries. Chris was bleeding to death.
GUY BLANCHARD: He was very pale, very white, he was semiconscious. He was with us, he could talk to us, he knew what day it was, which was a great start. At the same stage, he was very sick.
BEN FORDHAM: The race to save Chris Barlow had just begun. The nearest major hospital was more than two hours by road. The Westpac Lifesaver Helicopter would have Chris at Penrith's Nepean Hospital in just 15 minutes. What's the first you knew something was wrong?
ANNETTE BARLOW: Well, my daughter took the call, she just called out, 'Mum, it's Pete on the phone'. I knew that something was wrong that Pete would ring me on the house phone. And, um, he just said, 'Chris has had an accident. He's okay, he's broken some bones, and straight away I just thought, 'What about internal damage?'
BEN FORDHAM: Chris's mum, Annette, was spot on. Her son was in big trouble. His pelvis was broken in three places. He had a shattered wrist, and a fractured collarbone, but it was his crushed kidney bleeding profusely that was killing him. Chris's family was called in to say 'goodbye'.
ANNETTE BARLOW: I was able to walk around and talk to him.
BEN FORDHAM: What did he say?
ANNETTE BARLOW: He said, 'Hi Mum, I love you', and I said, 'I love you, too'. And, um, and he said, 'No more bike riding', and I just laughed and I said, 'Maybe you could do something like cross-country or something a bit safer'.
CHRIS BARLOW: I can't even imagine what it would be like for them, yeah. They showed me photos of me with all the tubes in me and stuff, and I just — I just cried, and I was crying for them. That would have been just so hard for them.
ANNETTE BARLOW: That's where I realised that there was nothing I could do except stand by his side and be there for him, and talk to him and love him. I was totally helpless, and he was helpless, and we had to trust the wonderful people around him that cared for him.
BEN FORDHAM: First, the intensive care team had to stem the bleeding from Chris's shattered kidney. There were 55 blood transfusions replacing three times his entire blood supply.
PROFESSOR TONY MCLEAN: There was some doubt actually as to whether he would survive. He had major injuries throughout the body — the abdomen, the pelvis and the brain.
BEN FORDHAM: Professor Tony McLean headed the intensive care team.
PROFESSOR TONY MCLEAN: He got very good care on the pre-hospital and in the emergency department and that greatly assisted his outcome, but he was in very great danger of dying in the first few days.
BEN FORDHAM: For 14 days, Chris was on life support, with emergency feeding tubes in his neck and a ventilator stuck down his throat.
CHRIS BARLOW: I thought I was going to die, I couldn't breathe and there was nothing I could do. I had the trachie in my neck and I couldn't yell or anything. Very vulnerable feeling lying there in hospital, with not being able to talk and not being able to move your arms.
BEN FORDHAM: More than 100 people fought to save Chris as he teetered on the brink. For surgeons to orderlies, to highly skilled and committed intensive care nurses, like Athena Karberis.
ANTHENA KARBERIS: When a patient comes into ICU normally they are on life support, they have a tube down their throat, they can't talk to us, they can't write, so the frustration and fear that they fell must be incredible.
BEN FORDHAM: Chris even told me that, at times, he would grab hold of one of your hands to feel safe.
ATHENA KARBERIS: Absolutely, yes, yes — no, that's what we are there for, yeah.
BEN FORDHAM: Two weeks after the crash, Chris was finally stable enough for the delicate operation to remove his ruptured kidney.
CHRIS BARLOW: And from that I've got a massive scar. I've been in hospital for the last five weeks, four weeks in intensive care. Um, yeah.
DJ: Can't wait to get out, mate?
CHRIS BARLOW: I'm looking forward to it. Got another week before I can start walking.
BEN FORDHAM: Four months later, Chris returns to thank the team that saved him.
ATHENA KARBERIS: I can't tell you how we feel when we see our ex-patients walk through the door. It's, you know, we actually request that they come back and walk through that door for us. As I said, it keeps us coming to this job.
BEN FORDHAM: It's a tough person who can get back on his feet so soon after such an horrific crash, and it takes guts to return to the place where he nearly died. That is frightening when you look at it from here.
CHRIS BARLOW: Yep, this is a scary angle. The video doesn't do it justice.
BEN FORDHAM: No, it doesn't. From the end of the jump, it's 11 metres, or 30 feet, back to earth. The exit speed is close to 70km/h. So you take a big, deep breath …
CHRIS BARLOW: Yep, and I said a prayer, and then I went.
BEN FORDHAM: You took off.
CHRIS BARLOW: I took off, put the pedals in, 'That's it, let's go, see you at the bottom'.
BEN FORDHAM: So did you miss the mark or what happened?
CHRIS BARLOW: I'm pretty sure I left the ramp doing the right angle.
BEN FORDHAM: Because straight on it's headed virtually straight toward the tree, give or take a few inches.
CHRIS BARLOW: Yeah, like, it's pretty close.
BEN FORDHAM: Did you build the ramp in the wrong spot?
CHRIS BARLOW: Maybe, we may have done, yeah.
BEN FORDHAM: You put her through hell, mate.
ANNETTE BARLOW: Yes, don't you ever do that again!
CHRIS BARLOW: Okay, I won't.
ANNETTE BARLOW: You are never to do that again, I don't want to go through this again. No mother should have to go through that.
BEN FORDHAM: Did you ever get angry at Chris or get angry at his mates?
ANNETTE BARLOW: I didn't get angry with him, because boys do that, people do that.
BEN FORDHAM: It could happen to me walking across my road, you know, accidents happen. And when they do, be thankful for blokes like paramedic Guy Blanchard. Chris's is just one of hundreds of emergencies Guy attends every year.
CHRIS BARLOW: Thank you for coming out.
GUY BLANCHARD: Mate, that's what we do.
ANNETTE BARLOW: Thank you so much.
GUY BLANCHARD: That's alright.
BEN FORDHAM: But for Annette, it will be forever much more than that.
ANNETTE BARLOW: So wonderful, thank you.
GUY BLANCHARD: Are you okay?
ANNETTE BARLOW: Yeah, thank you so much.
GUY BLANCHARD: I don't consider myself to be a hero of any sort. I'm just a bloke that comes to work, does his job.
BEN FORDHAM: These people do.
GUY BLANCHARD: I thank them for that, I'm humbled.
BEN FORDHAM: Chris knows he's only alive, only able to celebrate his 21st birthday, thanks to some remarkable people who've dedicated their lives to saving ours. We don't always hear the good stories about the system — hospitals, health.
ANNETTE BARLOW: Well, you need to because it was fantastic. There is … I could not fault how wonderful the care was there, and how professional, how wise, they were.
BEN FORDHAM: So what's going to happen to Chris's bike?
ANNETTE BARLOW: One of the first things Christopher said to us was he was going to sell it, and he's actually taken the buckled wheel off and repaired it, and he wants to sell it.
BEN FORDHAM: Between you and me, now that Mum's not listening, you can tell me the truth here, are you going to sell the bike or what?
CHRIS BARLOW: Mmm, probably not. But I'm going to lay off the jumps. So I'll keep that promise.
