On September 10, 2023, 17-year-old Fletcher Crowley's life changed in an instant.
It started as a day like any other. He was spending the weekend out on the bike tracks and dirt jumps with a bunch of his mates in Sydney's Northern Beaches. Fletcher was planning to attempt a double backflip on his bike. This wasn't the first time he had attempted the move, having been successful doing it a few times prior.
He felt confident. Assured. He was having an absolute blast.
"The vibe was so good, and I was surrounded by friends. I had done heaps of single flips and so I figured, 'I'll just go for it and try the double flip,'" he tells Mamamia's No Filter podcast.
"I didn't pull hard enough and I ended up basically folding myself in half."
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It was 4pm on that fateful Sunday afternoon when Fletcher's dad Pat received a phone call.
Pat was at the supermarket in the freezer aisle. He says it was like time stood still in that moment.
"I got a call from a random number. Whenever Fletcher was out riding bikes, you would tend to get calls from his friends as his phone would be dead. So I answered. But Fletcher was on the other end and he said he'd 'had a pickle.' He hadn't wanted to scare me."
Initially, Pat wasn't terribly concerned, as Fletcher had experienced various injuries to his ACL and knees, associated with dirt bike riding. Pat and Fletcher's mother Nicky had never discouraged their son from riding as it was his passion from when he was a young kid. They just asked him to be as safe as possible.
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