VIDEO. Cycling: “We’re all afraid”, chain massacres in the peloton following numerous falls

| March 28, 2024 | Sport | No Comments

VIDEO. Cycling: “We’re all afraid”, chain massacres in the peloton following numerous falls

Julian Alaphilippe fell heavily in 2022 at Strade Bianche. Twitter screenshot (X). – Twitter screenshot (X).

Going faster and faster, cycling still causes so many falls and fractures. The new fall, notably involving Wout Van Aert, Wednesday March 27, in Across Flanders is the perfect example.

Collective falls, broken bones and vanished dreams: week after week, cyclists find themselves in the hospital, like the Belgian Wout Van Aert on Wednesday, recalling the dangers of life. a sport that goes faster and faster.

Over the past four days, three races have been marked by failures that were as spectacular as they were painful. In France, half of the peloton found themselves on the ground, their flesh bruised, on Sunday during the Roue Tourangelle. Rebelote on Wednesday where a new massive fall at Paris-Camembert led to several retirements, including that of Jason Tesson, winner of … the Tourangelle Wheel.

But it was above all the terrible collective crash on Wednesday in Across Flanders which left its mark given the violence of the shock and the seriousness of the injuries. Polytraumatized, Wout Van Aert, one of the stars of the peloton, suffers from burns on his back and especially fractures to his collarbone, ribs and sternum, signaling the end of his dream of winning the Tour of Flanders on Sunday or Paris-Roubaix on the weekend. -next end.

The Belgian, who is expected to be absent for many weeks, was operated on during the night from Wednesday to Thursday in Herentals, his hometown. Just after him, another Belgian runner, Jasper Stuyven, took to the table in the same hospital to repair a broken collarbone.

"Enormous pressure"

"Maybe we'll have coffee together in the morning", the winner of Milan-Sanremo 2021 preferred to laugh to the Flemish daily HLN. Luxembourger Alex Kirsch, his teammate at Lidl-Trek, broke his hand. Their leader Mads Pedersen escaped with scratches.

If the fall on Wednesday was particularly heavy, rare are the races which deliver a clean medical report. Since the start of the season, dozens of runners have ended up in the ambulance. Just last month, several of them (Sénéchal, Rui Costa, Johannessen, Lemmen, Capiot, Ackermann, Kelderman, Gee…) broke their collarbones, the cyclists' fracture.

Sometimes, accidents take an even more dramatic turn, such as the death of Gino Mader while descending a pass during the Tour de Suisse last June. On Wednesday, the fall took place on an ultra-fast and reputedly dangerous false-flat descent, to the point that it was removed from the Tour of Flanders route.

"Maybe we will remove it from all our races", indicated Tomas Van Den Spiegel on behalf of the organizers of the "Flanders Classics". But the riders also have their share of responsibility by going faster and faster and braking later and later, also thanks to more efficient disc brakes.

"The average level of the peloton is very high and the pressure is enormous to be well placed, at the front", underlines Belgian veteran Tim Declercq of the’ Lidl-Trek team.

"We're all scared"

Urban furniture intended to slow down automobile traffic (medians, islands, etc.) adds to the danger. “By car we enter city centers at 30 km/h and we arrive at 60 km/h on a bike. Just saying that settles the matter, believes Frenchman Benoît Cosnefroy.

"Falls are part of our sport but we can act to protect the riders", says Jan Bakelants, former wearer of the yellow jersey on the Tour de France, nicknamed "Jan the Strong" , today a consultant for the Flemish media Sporza.

This close friend of Wout Van Aert offers "a sort of airbag to put on your back like when skiing". "We need measures that mitigate the consequences of a fall,” he insists. In the meantime, the runners deal with this game of massacres and the physical but also psychological damage it causes.

A runner like the Frenchman Pierre Latour cannot overcome his fear of falling on descents, during which he is systematically let go. The Spaniard Enric Mas suffered from the same paralysis before overcoming the evil over time.

Julian Alaphilippe, who came close to the worst by crashing into a tree on Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2022, admits to being "a little more afraid than before when it happened go quickly and we are not far from the fall. "When you hear a big fall not far from you, the sound of carbon farting, the guys yelling… we are all afraid. A cyclist who is not afraid, I don’t know any,” confides Benoît Cosnefroy.

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