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Jess Hardiman
Footage captures the horrifying moment a mountain biker should have died after being involved in a high speed accident.
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
At 20, Aussie Chris Barlow enjoyed ‘free riding’ - an extreme form of mountain biking that sees riders fly through difficult trails not with rapid speed, but also while tackling tricky jumps and drops.
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But while Barlow was used to the high octane lifestyle, at one point it almost came crashing to an end when he was involved in a terrifying accident – one that almost cost him his life.
Barlow and his friends were cycling in ‘the middle of nowhere’ when he took on a 30ft woodland jump at 40mph and crashed into a tree.
As a result, he was left with severe internal injuries, while his blood pressure plummeted.
Speaking to Nine Network’s 60 Minutes back in 2007, Barlow said he remember lying on his back after the accident thinking he wasn’t ‘going to be alright’ and was ‘stuffed’.
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“That’s one of the things that kept going through my head: ‘This is stupid, this is stupid.’”
While Barlow was semi-conscious, due to the nature of his injuries, he was ‘bleeding to death’.
With the nearest major hospital – Penrith Nepean Hospital – more than two hours by road, he had to be transferred by helicopter, a journey that thankfully took just 15 minutes.
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Doctors found that Barlow’s 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’.
As the intensive care team stemmed the bleeding from his kidney, he had 55 blood transfusions – replacing three times his entire blood supply.
Professor Tony McClain, who headed the intensive care team, said Barlow was in 'great danger of dying’ as he lay on life support for 14 days, with emergency feeding tubes in his neck and a ventilator down his throat.
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“I thought I was going to die,” Barlow said.
“I couldn’t breathe, and there was nothing I could do.”
Barlow’s family were called into the hospital to say their goodbyes, but amazingly - thanks to the efforts of more than 100 people - he managed to pull through.
Emotional footage showed Barlow returning to hospital four months later to thank the team that saved his life.
He also went back to the jump that almost killed him, saying the video of his accident ‘doesn’t do it justice’.