UKH

Did anyone else see this? Absolutely horrific. Fingers crossed he recovers.

Yes, horrible.  I think he's had surgery and is in an induced coma, but the signs are positive.  Groenewegen is getting dog's abuse on social media.  Feel for him a bit.

There was chat on another forum about whether he could be held criminally responsible in some way. I expect he feels awful about it although the set up of barriers and the nature of that finish also contributed to the severity.

Looked pretty nasty. Poor riding undoubtedly from the leader (I can’t spell his name) but not terribly worse imo than examples of bad riding from many other pros- including some of our own riders over the years. It seemed that the poor chap was a victim of a perfect storm of events. Hopefully he, and the official who was injured make a good recovery and are back on bikes soon. 

I think Groenewegen is going to get roasted and rightly so.  He started off on the centre line, crossed all the way over to the barrier on a straight run-in and flicked an elbow at about 80 kph and came with a whisker of killing several people.  There is no way that that is a sporting incident - at the rate he was coming across, even if Jakobsen had eased off Groenewegen would still have collected his front wheel.  It was a straight run-in with more than enough room, especially as Groenewegen started off in the middle.  He's going to have his work cut out to explain that there was no malicious intent - he might have a chance with the diagonal line, but not with the final elbow flick and he can't argue as Sagan did (unsuccessfully) that it was a reflex protective action, not when he'd all the room in the world to his left.  I rather expect that the team sponsors are going to be furious with the coverage, as will the UCI as they had a fatality in Poland last year

PS - for those who haven't seen it - it's here https://twitter.com/wcsbike/status/1291048127823314945   It's not nice.

​​​​​​If you are a sensitive soul do yourself a favour and don't click on that.

Absolutely. I think I was commenting more along the lines that others have ridden poorly in the past but little meaningful action has been taken against those riders. 
 

Maybe after the dust settles clearer and more severe penalties will be drawn up to combat these actions. 

I'm just amazed all the safety barriers disintegrated like that. That can't be normal.

Supposedly he has a crushed palette, but they are saying no signs of brain damage despite the head injury.

Its tough because sprint finishes are pretty violent physical confrontations but this really was outright dangerous but I just don't think the barriers worked either.

They're not crash barriers - they really just keep the course clear and contain crashes to an extent.  At those speeds, crash barriers would need to be big squashy things with room to move

Because he's going to feel awful about the outcome of his actions; actions that aren't exactly rare in the finales of bike races.  The incident was his fault, but the severity of the outcome is a much wider issue.  

I thought he had a reputation for such actions though?

It’s not normal, the barriers were not to standard as has been reported elsewhere, the UCI and the race organisers have a place to play in this crash I’m afraid, a downhill sprint with crap barriers is just an accident waiting to happen that did.

Not that I was aware of but I’ve since read so. 

I didn't but a friend is a good rider, watches a lot and has competed to a pretty high standard, and he said he wasn't surprised when he saw who the rider involved was. Again though it's tough, they are physical finishes, high adrenalin. 

An interesting article on it... 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/cycling-has-to-take-har...

Absolutely right....something has to change and quickly. Uphill sprints only is a quick short term measure they could implement to take the speed down.

and they need to really police the finishes and penalise poor riding very heavily...

Yep.

Better / safer  infrastructure at the finish line.

No downhill finishes.

Big penalties for poor / dangerous riding.

Job done.

E

Bradley’s come up with a fourth idea that might be worth looking at ... lane markers of some sort.

https://road.cc/content/news/wiggins-jakobsen-cycling-could-learn-athletics...

Those aren't safety barriers. They are advertising hoardings that appear designed to maim and injure.

Absolutely shocking that they have no structural integrity. Straw bales would be better - at least they aren't metal with pointy edges.

Like barriers at car events, they should be designed to safely contain a competitor and let them slide along (and not bounce back if possible). This shouldn't be beyond the wit of man, or particularly expensive, nor any more time consuming to set up

Some better news: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/aug/07/fabio-jakobsen-tour-of-poland...