Following a crash in the men’s C4/C5 road race at the Rio Paralympics, Bahman Golbarnezhad, the 48-year-old cyclist succumbed to his death.
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The C4-5 road cycling event was his second race in Rio.
The circuit was also used in the 2016 Rio Olympics and involves hilly stretches with steep bends during descents.
The incident is being investigated by the Paralympics Committee in depth. Among the stars were Brazil’s swimmer Daniel Dias who added four golds, three silvers and two bronzes to his existing medal haul from Beijing and London which has won him descriptions as the Michael Phelps of the Paralympics.
A moment of silence will be held during tomorrow’s closing ceremony for the Games, while the Iran Flag is flying at half-mast in the Paralympic Village.
Masoud Ashrafi, the head of the NPC, said Golbarnezhad “lost control and he hit the fence or wall”.
The Iranian Paralympic team were told of the news as a group in the Athlete’s Village this evening.
“He was the kind of man who was a family man. He loved his family”.
“Regretfully, IR IRAN NPC announces that Mr. Bahman Golbarnezhad passed away because of his accident during the competition”.
Rio will close a Paralympic Games that many feared would be a fiasco but which turned into a triumph, though marred in the final hours by the death of an Iranian cyclist.
“The Paralympic Family is united in grief at this horrendous tragedy which casts a shadow over what have been great Paralympic Games here in Rio”, Philip Craven, the committee’s president, said in a statement.
“Our hearts and prayers are with Bahman’s family, his teammates and all the people of Iran”, he said.
An Australian para-cyclist, reports ABC, has been injured in the same race. He had finished 14th in Wednesday’s C4 Time Trial.
“As they put me in the neck brace, I just kept asking ‘what’s the result?’ Technically I crossed the line first but I was still unsure because I ran across the line, and it’s not a running race.”
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An investigation into the circumstances of the accident has been launched by the IPC and organisers will stage a press conference at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium later.
