Connect CEO Improving From Head Injury After Bike Crash in Mountains

Connect CEO Duane Roth, who sustained a head injury while bicycling Sunday in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego, has passed through the most-critical period after undergoing emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, according to his brother Ted.

“We’re certainly moving in the right direction,” Ted Roth told me today by phone. “We’re now looking at the recovery phase.”

Doctors put Duane Roth into a medically induced coma following surgery, and he remains sedated, Ted Roth said. He is listed in serious condition at the UC San Diego Medical Center, according to spokeswoman Jackie Carr. It is still unclear just how much time it will take him to recover. While he also sustained some scrapes and bruises, Ted Roth said his brother’s head injury appears to be the only serious injury he sustained.

Duane Roth

Connect, the San Diego nonprofit organization that supports technology innovation and entrepreneurship, named Tyler Orion as an interim president until Duane Roth can return as CEO. The former pharmaceutical executive became CEO of Connect about eight years ago. Duane Roth is a longtime leader of San Diego’s life sciences community, and also serves as vice-chairman of the governing board at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the program that supports stem cell research in California.

Kitchen Creek bicycle loop

The bicycling accident occurred while Roth, 63, was on a training ride organized by the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a San Diego nonprofit that provides supportive sporting programs and competitive events for amputees and others facing physical challenges. About 55 other bicyclists were riding the same 57-mile route, which included water stations and other support, according to Kristine Entwistle, the foundation’s director of development. The route, known as the Kitchen Creek loop, is familiar to many San Diego bicyclists, she added.

The group was training for the Dodge Million Dollar Challenge, an annual 620-mile bike ride along the California Coast (from San Francisco to San Diego). The seven-day ride in October helps to raise funds for the foundation.

“We’ve developed a

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.