Wayward helicopters are probably very low on the list of things professional cyclists have to worry about, right down there with crashing in the finishing chute. However, a scatterbrained helicopter pilot managed to combine both at the Vuelta a España yesterday.
Philippe Gilbert was leading the Tour de France breakaway down the descent of the Portet d’Aspet when he played a corner wrong, locked his wheel up, and vaulted headfirst over a little rock ledge. It’s the worst sort of crash, though Gilbert did scrub some speed before eating shit. That may have saved him—he was able…
Every one of Tour de France’s race’s three mass-start stages has been shaken up by a late crash. Fernando Gaviria won Stage One from a reduced group, then found himself unable to challenge Peter Sagan for the win the next day after a rider in front of him played a corner wrong and took him out. Stage Two’s crash…
Canadian ski cross racer Chris Del Bosco fought gravity and lost during a qualifying heat, losing control at the worst moment and catapulting some 30 feet down the course and landing hard on his right side.
Cars with automatic brake sensors built into them are wonderful when used in cities and other places where they can keep unaware drivers from killing cyclists. However, a bike race’s lead car is perhaps the worst possible vehicle for the technology, and five cyclists were the unfortunate victims of a lead car at the…
This morning in Vittel, French champion Arnaud Demare won Stage 4 of the Tour de France from a bunch sprint. It’s the first time a French rider has won a bunch sprint at the Tour since 2006, but Demare’s historic victory was overshadowed by a wild crash that took place right behind him, in which world champion Peter…
Moto2 qualifying for tomorrow’s Dutch Grand Prix came to a halt today as Italian rider Lorenzo Baldassarri launched his bike, and himself, high into the air in a crash that left this viewer assuming he must be completely broken. Baldassarri later tweeted from the hospital that he’s “almost like new”:
Team Sky have spent the past few weeks embroiled in one of the biggest doping controversies the sport has seen since Lance Armstrong, and this morning, their on-road fate has ominously aligned with the team’s image. Sky are usually one of the best team time trial squads out there and they’ve taken TTT’s at multiple…
The professional cycling peloton is currently wrapping up its preseason at the Abu Dhabi Tour, the last of the Middle East races. The first cobbled classic of the season takes place this weekend, but for now, the best sprinters in the world are enjoying the warm temperatures and flat roads of the United Arab Emirates…
On the first pass, the highlight of the below video is the man right behind the first falling cyclist who vaults into the air upon impact. Then you see him.
Road cycling season started this week with the Tour Down Under (it’s in Australia, which, duh), and it began without Spanish superstar Joaquim Rodriguez for the first time in 16 years. Rodriguez was waffling on whether or not to ride for Bahrain-Merida, but ultimately decided not to.
The USA Cyclocross National Championships are this week and weekend in Hartford, CT. Hartford is a perfect place to host such an event, since cyclocross races are best when they’re muddy, chaotic messes. The temperature is not supposed to rise much above freezing while this week’s racing is going on, and the course…
Howard Brookins can’t stand squirrels.
Cyclocross is a sport that fuses road bike racing with mountain biking, creating a hybrid sport that is essentially road racing on a muddy obstacle course. As such, people crash all the time into the mud while trying to bunny hop over barriers, navigate slippery corners, or descend sandy inclines. It’s a weird sport,…
After Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten crashed while leading the Olympic road race, I thought she was dead. She fell headfirst into a ditch and appeared to wrench her neck in the process, then remained motionless as her pursuers passed her. No official update was offered for about ten minutes, and given the violence…
The Tour Cycliste Antenne Reunion is about as far on the fringes of the cycling world as you can get. While the top of the pro peloton is touring across either Spain or Britain right now and the second division is busy finishing up their seasons in lesser European races, the remote Indian Ocean island of Reunion (it’s…
Keirin is a track cycling event where racers start behind a motorized pace vehicle, then more or less sprint it out for two kilometers. During the final lap of heat two at the women’s keirin this morning, French rider Virginie Cueff tried to budge her way into the outside lane so she could try and swing over for the…
Dutch rider Annemiek Van Vleuten crashed on the descent with less than seven miles remaining in the 85-mile road race. While the course was different from the one we illustrated as being difficult-to-dangerous, much of it did follow the men’s course.
Where most tough bike races are defined by one particularly cruel feature (for example, the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix), the Olympics road race course has everything. The course is packed with cobbles, crosswinds, technical descents, and Grand Tour-length climbs. This is not to mention that Olympic teams are half the…
The last summit finish of the 2016 Tour de France came and went, with the general classification race shaken up by a series of crashes more than anything. Chris Froome’s overall lead looked unassailable even before he won yesterday’s time trial, but the rest of the top ten has been a jumbled mess. This morning’s stage…
