There are certain risks involved with being a card carrying member of the Nitro Circus family and this week, on the set of their upcoming feature film "Nitro Circus 3D," those risks became an unfortunate and ugly reality for professional mountain biker and freestyle rider Jim DeChamp.
According to folks from within Nitro Circus Live management, DeChamp was injured during filming on June 29 in Utah when a car stunt went wrong. The resulting crash, explained Nitro Circus Live PR maven Jaime Mortimer, left DeChamp with broken vertebrae in his back and severe head trauma.
Luckily, however, there was no spinal damage says Mortimer and, after a successful surgery on Thursday, doctors expect the 30-year-old Maryland native to make a full recovery. "It's pretty scary," summed up NC Live Creative Director Dov Ribnick, "And if it was anyone else we would be really, really worried right now, but Jim is pretty much the toughest guy in the world."
For DeChamp, who has been a close friend of Nitro ringleader Travis Pastrana since childhood, this isn't the first time doing something radical has broken his back. During X Games 14 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif., DeChamp under-rotated on a historic front-flip attempt in the Moto Best Trick competition and ended up crashing in such a way that he went home with a diagonal compression fracture of his T12 vertebrae.
ESPN will update this story as it develops.