Bad physical accidents

The worst I ever saw someone get hurt physically was a couple years back on the 4th of July weekend, when I was still doing hang gliding. (Yeah, I honest-to-god did hang gliding.) It came to mind this evening when I was watching the world pairs figure skating thing with Silent E, and there was a clip of one of the pairs 5 months ago where the guy lifted up the girl and then from the top of that lift, about 8' up, she just fell forward face flat on the ice, and kind of skidded a bit, and didn't move. The kind of thing that wrests an immediate "Oh dear god!" from you, where you know that someone's gotten badly hurt.

The girl's not only ok now, she just won the World Championship; and Barry, the hang glider pilot I'm going to talk about, is also ok now, and back to flying. If you want to know what it's like, as best as I can write, when someone gets really badly hurt, read on...

( He didn't land, he pounded into the ground )