Thursday 19 June 2008

Frank Schleck at the Tour de Suisse: Ouch!

Amazingly, Frank Schleck came through this with nothing more than bruises. He was actually leading, with Markus Fothen joining him in the breakaway, and would have taken the yellow jersey of the Tour de Suisse. He finished 2'42" down, but at least he can ride again tomorrow.

Ride safely out there, everyone!

8 comments:

Cycling Phun said...

Hey Sprocket, how's it going? Where the heck did he land anyway? Trees, or below?

Will said...

He's a pro and wasn't even going that fast.

That's why I descend like a wimp.

PS - Verbier today is near me :)

Groover said...

Thanks for posting. What a shame, hey? Did he just overshoot the corner, or what happened? I couldn't quite figure it out.

Sprocketboy said...

He said that he was going too fast for the corner and misjudged it. The last time I saw something like this was when Johann Bruyneel, in his pro racing days, went over the edge and his bike was so far down a ravine the team had to give him a spare when they hauled him out. There is a famous incident in the 1960s at the Tour de France of a Dutch riding going off the road so far that the team had to pull him up by tying together all their tubulars. They had to pull out of the race the next day since they couldn't fix any of their flats!

Donald said...

This is unreal... I was readling about it on cycling news but had not seen the video... wow! I just finished Bruyneel's book. He talks in detial about that crash he had in the Tour. I love the story about tying the tubulars together. Wealth of knowledge... you are.

Sprocketboy said...

Donald, it was Wim van Est in 1951 and I think he was actually wearing the Yellow Jersey at the time. Astoundingly, I have found footage of that crash that I will post tonight!

Judi said...

That is fucking crazy.

Anonymous said...

Ouch is right. That'll definitely leave a mark...