Van Vleuten tumbled face-first over the handlebars and landed on her head on the pavement, seemingly being knocked unconscious on impact.
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“Annemiek has severe concussion and three small fracture particles in her lumbar spine”, a statement said.
Pooley, who rides in Wednesday’s time-trial, said: “It was foolish of her, and I’m sure she agrees, to get to the three strikes point, but she was cleared of one of them”.
“I’m actually quite angry because I looked at the road furniture and thought nobody can crash here and get up”. She was reeled in just 150 meters from the finish line by van der Breggen, Sweden’s Emma Johansson and Italian Emma Longo Borghini as the riders streaked along Copacabana.
The 33-year-old was 10km from Olympic gold when she tumbled over her handlebars and crashed into on a concrete curb on tricky descent that some have said was too risky for the Games.
Dutch chef de mission Maurits Hendriks said van Vleuten was being taken to hospital.
The federation added that she was “conscious and speaking”.
“I can’t imagine being in her shoes right now”.
Teammate Anna van der Breggen went on to win the gold medal.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to putting this behind me”, she said after staying deep in the field for much of the Sunday’s race and just failing to perform well enough in the final climb.
“Annemiek was leading but I realised I was now first in the team so I had to chase”.
The crash happened on the Vista Chinesa, the same descent where the leaders of the men’s race were wiped out on Saturday.
The carnage began on Saturday when Giro d’ Italia victor Vincenzo Nibali and Colombia climber Sergio Henao were leading on the same slippery, technical descent. Australia’s Richie Porte also broke his shoulder blade in the race.
Chris Boardman, 1992 Olympic champion and BBC co-commentator, thought the route was “dangerous”.
“It was a wrong judgement”, said the French rider who finished 26th.
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“I was really shocked when I saw the crash and it didn’t look good but I had to focus and keep on with the race”, said van der Breggen, who won in 3 hours 51.27 seconds.
