CAR V CYCLIST: CAR WINS

You’re always incredibly aware of your vulnerability as a cyclist on the road. No matter how experienced you are, no matter how beautiful your surroundings, the chance is there that at any moment one of the large, heavy metal boxes zooming past you could career into you, or cause you to crash. All that stands between a rider and serious injury is often thin bits of Lycra and a plastic helmet.

The crash that involved seven BoraHansgrohe riders and an SUV near Lake Garda in January is the latest reminder that professional cycling happens in the real world. It’s one of the joys of cycling that training and racing happens out there on the roads, not in artificial conditions inside stadiums, with riders locked away. But it’s also a pointed reminder that professional cyclists are just as much in danger as you or I when we go out for a bike ride.

Wilco Kelderman and Andreas Schillinger both suffered broken vertebrae as a result of the crash, which happened when the car allegedly cut across the group on an empty main road, while the riders were going at about 40kph. Schillinger said his helmet saved his life.

There are echoes of the horrific crash involving the Giant-Alpecin team in 2016, when a car drove straight into a group of riders in Calpe, Spain, leaving six of the riders needing emergency assistance, and seriously affecting the career of John Degenkolb, among others. Last year, Bora’s Max Schachmann was knocked off his bike by a car that had driven onto the course at Il Lombardia in the race’s final kilometres, breaking his collarbone in the process.

Professional cycling, just like the whole world, will benefit from a reduction in private car ownership, and also an increase in motorists who are more aware of cyclists, and the risks that they pose to them every time they pass too close, pull out in front of them or overtake dangerously in their car. Cyclists are not the enemy.