Annemiek van Vleuten crashed her bicycle less than seven miles from the finishing line in the Rio Olympic Games road race on Sunday, breaking her back in the process – and her heart because she was leading for the gold.
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Van Vleuten stunned viewers around the world when she tumbled over the handlebars on a high speed descent and flew head first into the kerb when leading 11km from the finish of the 139.6km race on Monday (NZT). Coverage of the event showed the cyclist still and unresponsive as help arrived on the course.
Anna van der Breggen overcame the “shock” of seeing Dutch teammate Annemiek van Vleuten sprawled motionless in the road before going on to claim Olympic cycling gold. She will remain in intensive care for at least 24 hours.
Several other cyclists in Saturday’s men’s race had also crashed on the same descent where van Vleuten ran into trouble. “Hopefully it wasn’t as bad as it looked”.
She also said she was “super disappointed” by the crash, which left her in intensive care with three small spinal fractures. “No one did anything about it. The most important thing is that absolute rest is necessary at this time”, Dutch team doctor Cees Rein said on the Dutch Cycling Federation website.
“It’s a hard descent because you can go really fast but you also have to corner”, van der Breggen said.
Unlike when American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis fell while celebrating a victory too early at the 2006 Winter Olympics, it’s easy to feel for Van Vleuten.
Before accepting the gold medal for the race, Van Vleuten’s teammate Van Der Breggan was crying, reportedly over her teammate’s crash, and had to be consoled by fellow medalists, Emaa Johansson of Sweden, who won silver, and Italy’s Longo Borghini, who won bronze.
British cyclist Chris Boardman, the 1992 Olympic champion who is now a cycling commentator, led criticism of the course, branding it “dangerous”.
Writing through her Twitter account, van Vleuten said: “I am now in the hospital with some injuries and fractures, but will be fine”. “We knew it was way past being technical; it was unsafe”, he told the BBC.
After viewing the crash, Boardman had said: “I’m actually quite angry about it because I looked at the road furniture and thought nobody can crash here and get up”.
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She later added: “Still in the hospital”.
