Dutch cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten entered intensive care after suffering three cracked vertebrae in a stomach-churning high-speed crash during the Olympic road race yesterday.
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Vleuten was leading the race with about 12 kilometers left when her back tire appeared to skid out during a descent down the Vista Chinesa.
The 33-year-old ended up failing to take a curve in the road correctly and was thrown over her handlebars, landing on her head. Shortly after she was placed on a stretcher to be taken to the hospital, the Dutch Cycling Federation tweeted that van Vleuten is OK and conscious.
The cyclist was conscious when she was loaded into an ambulance; Chef de Mission Maurits Hendriks and team doctors said she was stable and speaking Sunday night.
Van Vleuten’s teammate Anna van der Breggen won the 136.9km race, outsprinting Swede Emma Johansson at Fort Copacabana, while Italian Elisa Longo Borghini was third.
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Van der Breggen, while celebrating her victory, said her thoughts were with her injured teammate, said CNN. “When you’re going that fast, you’ve got a very small part of the wheel in contact with the road at any time, so if anything gets between your wheel and the road, it’s catastrophic”, she said. “We knew this was way past this being a technical, this was unsafe”. I saw Annemiek lie and that did not look good. Coverage of the event showed the cyclist still and unresponsive as help arrived on the course. “Most of all super disappointed after best race of my career”.
Katrin Garfoot withdrew early in proceedings as expected, given she has the individual time trial on Wednesday.
In video clips of the cringeworthy moment, spectators can be heard gasping as van Vleuten remains motionless on the ground.
On the crash, she said: “Sometimes in cycling the ones that look really bad aren’t as bad so I just hope that she’s all right…”
Armitstead had a controversial lead-up to the Olympics, where she had to appeal after being banned for missing three doping tests.
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Van der Breggen thrust her arms in the air as thousands of fans lining the course roared approval, and a light mist that had been threatening for hours finally began to fall.
