Professional racer Nick Cummings, 22, of Mount Morris, Michigan, was seriously injured in a crash during the Old Time Newsies flat track race June 13 at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, a half-mile pea gravel track in Dayton, Ohio. Cummings was riding his Tom Cummings Racing/Chris Carr Racing Harley-Davidson XR750 in the Dash for Cash, which paid $6000 to the winner, when he got tangled with another rider on the first lap and crashed. “Him and Jared Mees got out front in the Dash,” Tom Cummings, Nick’s father, told Roadracingworld.com Tuesday. “The track has this really crummy wall that sucks you in from the outside. I always told Nick to ride to the inside line off the corner. I think Jared beat him to the line. So they were coming off the corner side-by-side, and he basically ran out of ground. Nick got his bike up into the wall, and then it flung the thing out into the track. Then bikes started piling over him, ran over him.” Nick Cummings was transported to the nearby Miami Valley Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where he was diagnosed with a badly broken left shoulder, several broken ribs, two collapsed lungs and a cracked vertebra. He has yet to regain consciousness since the accident Saturday night. “He’s went through MRI’s and CT scans and everything,” said Tom Cummings. “They don’t see any brain damage. Right now we’re not suspecting any paralysis. But as for why he’s not waking, the doctors here say that sometimes when there’s that much trauma to the body your brain sometimes does that. It just shuts down. I don’t know. It’s pretty scary being here as a dad and day after day not seeing him wake up. “He can squeeze your finger. His mother goes in there, ‘If you know I’m here squeeze my finger.’ And he’ll squeeze her finger. And he does the same thing with his wife. He has tried to get up in the bed three or four times. “He’s kind of in limbo. He’s not conscious, but I don’t believe he’s dying on us. That’s all I can tell you. Trying to drag information out of these people [medical staff] is pretty hard.” But Cummings’ father said his condition has improved some since his son was brought to the hospital. He is still on a ventilator, but he is doing the majority of the breathing on his own. His cracked vertebra won’t require anything more than some time in a back brace to heal. His facial color has improved, returning to normal. And the broken shoulder can be fixed, albeit with extensive surgery or surgeries. In the meantime, Cummings’ family remain at his bedside waiting for him to regain consciousness. Cummings started his racing career as an amateur in flat track then began road racing on a 125cc GP machine at age 14. He was successful in both disciplines and won many titles, including the combined road race and dirt track Formula USA Grand National Championship in 2003 at age 16. But when AMA Pro road racing proved to be too expensive, Cummings re-focused on flat track. He recently won his heat race and finished fourth in the AMA Grand National Twins main event at the Springfield Mile. He also returned to road racing this season with Gary Nixon and Jay Springsteen’s Pair-A-Nines endurance team (which is second in the AMA Pro SunTrust Moto-GT2 Championship point standings after 4 of 12 races). A website has been established at ~http://www.nickcummings22.com/~ so friends and fans can send get well messages to Nick Cummings.