Staying on the comeback trail
ELKHART LAKE – Caroline Olsen had two ways she could have looked at her situation over the winter.
One option: She had come back from injury before.
Although Olsen was going through a period of pain and dread and doubt, she knew in the deepest depths of her psyche she could get back on a motorcycle after a bad crash.
The other: Someone was sending a message.
A freak accident in 2013, her first season in the United States, tore up her shoulder, necessitated two surgeries and cost her two years. Then four seasons later, a brake failure had erased a day of her life – including the helicopter ride to the hospital – and left her with bruised lungs, fractured vertebrae, a broken collarbone, a broken leg and lingering symptoms of a concussion. Olsen chose the first.
“My dad is probably the guy in our family that’s most worried. He’s like, 'Caroline, are you sure you’re going to do this again?' ” said Olsen, a 28-year-old Norwegian who races in MotoAmerica’s Supersport class.
“But at the same time … both my big accidents have not been my fault. You’ve got to take that into consideration. It’s not really a sport where you see these kinds of injuries on a regular basis.
“You push the limits and you slide out, but you don’t hit anything. You don’t hit a tire wall. You don’t hit trees. You don’t hit oncoming traffic. You don’t hit anything.
“Of course I’ve had doubts, but at the end of the day this is what I want to do.”
Nearly nine months after her catastrophic crash at New Jersey Motorsports Park, Olsen has worked her way back to try to race for the first time this weekend in the Dunlop Championship at Road America.
The obstacles Olsen faced were threefold: first physically, then mentally and now financially.
For nearly four months after her crash in September, Olsen couldn’t ride. Just couldn’t. Even today, her collarbone has not healed properly.
Then once Olsen was able to get on a bike again in January, she found herself with an unfamiliar problem. She had been speeding since she was 17, when her mother accidentally sent her to road
racing school instead of traffic school. And now Olsen was nowhere near her former pace.
“Racing wasn’t even in my head at that point,” she said Saturday. “I was telling myself to twist the throttle, and my body was telling me, no, we don’t want to. Just subconsciously, all the pain I’ve been in made it hard for me to go fast.”
With coaching from retired rider Jason Pridmore and encouragement from family and friends, though, Olsen kept working. They stayed on her, and she put pressure on herself.
She would get her head and her body in sync. She had to.
“I was in such a dark place,” Olsen said. “(When I felt) I’d rather stay in bed, curling up, tucking the duvet around me, I kept telling myself it was going to get better.
“I kept remembering that great feeling I had when everything was clicking. There’s no feeling in the world that can beat that. Just smelling the bikes, hearing the sounds. It’s something special.
“When I got up to pace … I want to inspire people that when you’re at your darkest, don’t give up. For me it was important to show everyone that even when you’ve been through what I’ve been through that you can come back and you can go fast.”
Professional racing isn’t all about speed, though. Out of competition and unable to tell people when she might return, Olsen had no sponsorship in line for this season.
She had a Yamaha R6 bike, her helmet and leathers, desire and an inspirational story. But no spare parts, no mechanics and no team.
Olsen did manage to put together a small budget, and barely a week before Road America she connected with TSE Racing in Darien to do the Road America doubleheader weekend.
After practicing and qualifying Friday and Saturday, Olsen decided at the last moment Saturday problems with her right shoulder wouldn't allow her to race in the first of the weekend's two races. She was looking for a chiropractor or acupuncturist in hopes of making the starting grid Sunday.
Olsen also plans to race in MotoAmerica’s next round in three weeks in Monterey, Calif.
After that, who knows?
“I think a lot of people or companies might want to be associated with a person that doesn’t give up, that knows how to motivate,” Olsen said. “Hopefully that will help me through the year.”