Love to see that in a race risk assessment, or on the application for your public liability insurance. The DH comparisons will continue but most people will have very little idea about what goes on in setting up races and getting stuff signed off.
Deliberately adding risk with serious consequences is reckless.
Not spotting it is negligence.

Edit @thm the consequences of hitting the gutter kerb thing could have been reduced. I agree not eliminated but mitigated.

If you watch the vid of Van Vleuten’s crash then you’ll see it was a simple, basic line error – she was on completly the wrong line.

She is in the middle of the RIGHT carriageway approaching a tightening right-hander. Mid-corner she runs out of room, bricks herself, slams on both brakes and goes OTB into the gutter/massive kerb. She should be on the LEFT side on entry, and the road before is basically straight so this was easy to do.

You may prefer to blame the road/IOC/someone but this was Van Vleuten’s error, and a basic error at that.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-annemiek-van-vleuten-crash-video-womens-road-race-conscious-hospital-a7177806.html?cmpid=facebook-post

And thats about it, hay bales would have made a huge difference, Im amazed that the safety folk didnt agree or didnt think of it or be told. Disc brakes, handling skills, commitment etc we will never know but hay bales would have helped

So which bit are you accusing the organisers of?

To an extent, the roads and the gutters were not designed for racing, Racing chose the road, What are your expectations? Every bit of kerb and every corner to be padded?

anyway, there but for the grace of God…I just wish here a speedy and full recover. Over and out.

This. Yes, we can expect fully-committed riders to make mistakes and go down on descents.

It is precisely because this is completely foreseeable that we expect the organisers to take a glance at the run-out from a handful of the worst corners and attempt to mitigate the consequences.

Does the TT use a different course?

At least part is the same, the TT goes along the newly-tarmacced bits on the cobbled section heading south towards the first loop (commentary was saying that the tarmac was laid expressly for the TT). That leads me to suspect they won’t be using Vista Chinesa

presumably the organisers reckoned yes they may crash but the cost / fuss of protecting those gutters / gulleys wasn’t important – or would reduce the road space – or – if raining – would affect the efficiency of clearing surface water.

That was just horrendous to watch, my wife was convinced she’d broken her neck there and then, and the impact was about as bad as you can get..

RegieGasket,

What legend and others said, wrong line but not deliberate and looked more like a high side than a braking error, the back wheel steps out, finds some grip and the resultant sideways momentum throws her over the bars.

Regardless, crashes happen. It could have been a baby Robin on the course, or another rider, the cause is immaterial because you can’t control it except by canceling the race (or holding a straight flat time trial). The only thing you can influence is the outcome. That kerb could have had a ramp put against it, or straw bales (look at hairpins on the tour, they very often have bales if there’s no run off), or flatten the kerb entirely and put up netting. None of that would be difficult or complicated, which is why it’s done elsewhere, but the organizers didn’t for some reason.

@kcr and mikewsmith

Very selective quoting of what i said. I said

“it’s a race, some very fatigued athletes at the limit of their abilities, there is an expectation that people are going to overcook corners. If you want good racing, then you want there to be at least the risk of this happening, if not a likelihood.

But when it happens, you want there to be a run off, or at worst a bit of torn lycra and road rash. Maybe even occasionally a collarbone – roads are hard. As well as the obvious crashes in the tour there were loads more where people overcooked corners and rode into the bushes or into people’s driveways.

The issue here was no run offs and big, raised edge kerbstones meaning that even an innocuous off carried a high risk of harm. On one hand everyone knew they were like that and had the choice to ride more safely as a result, but I still think more needed to be done to protect those edges”

Your misquoting is making me feel like a **** and i’m absolutely not, I’m outraged by the lack of protection of those edges. As i said in another post, for a few haybales this could have been avoided – the Red Bull soap box derby has better accident provision. Disgraceful.

Fixed that for you.

The duty of any organised sporting committee it to protect its competitors whilst retaining the fundementals of the sport, so look at the rule changes to rugby on order to protect its participants especially in the scrum, hockey introducing face masks at short corners.

The road race organisers failed to make the appropriate arrangements to protect riders from serious harm on the descents if a crash occured. It then failed to have marshalls close enough to offer assistance. It learnt nothing from the mens race when the crashes indicated the potential dangers, in fact it did not retension the point that Porte went into the fence.

The crash was horrific and one hopes the rider will recover fully.

I saw that yesterday. It has changed the sport. The goal keeper is now padded to the hilt. It changes the game completely, which is fine, but its not the game it was. It wont be long before its like ice hockey.

I find the “victim blaming” quite depressing, on a cycling forum.
I’m surprised no one’s starting asking for F1 to go back to the “good ‘ole days” when they used to kill on average a driver per race.
And to finish, a quote for Jackie Stewart,
“Cornering is like bringing a woman to a climax. Both you and the car must work together. You start to enter the area of excitement at the corner, you set up a pace which is right for the car and after you’ve told it it is coming along with you, you guide it along at a rhythm which has by now become natural. Only after you’ve cleared the corner you can both take pleasure in knowing it’s gone well.”

OK I wasn’t gonna contribute anymore but I just wonder if those arguing “it’s just what road racing is” have grasped why CB thought the descent was too dangerous.

My understanding from the commentary is that there were a number of steep, off camber corners leading into those wheel-trapping gutters.

The UCI has been defending the course so I assume it organised the event, or at least ratified it.

It’s going a little off topic, but there were concerns at the time about the Yorkshire roads at the tour;

Narrow Roads

The van Vleuten crash was sickening, the impact was hard and the fact that she was lying motionless for some time really didn’t look good for her. I hope she can make a full recovery.

Back to the actual race, I thought Lizzie rode well (pretty much unsupported), it was a shame she didn’t quite have the legs up the last climb to stay in touch and I guess the rest of the group lent on her on the run in. I think the Dutch deserved the win, they rode a smart race with a very strong team.

You need to separate out the crash itself (which shouldn’t have been unexpected, people crash in all dynamic, fast-moving sports) and the consequences of that crash (slamming into a big concrete kerb).

Watching it on TV, I thought the descent looked good – it’s nice to see a race with some technical aspects rather than simply a massive great hillclimb to a summit finish or a big wide boulevard sprint to end it.

However I can appreciate that taken at speed, epsecially in those quite dark conditions and with what looked like a bit of drizzly rain falling that it could very quickly have become dangerous.

Falling off is one thing but that kerb should have been protected. They managed it on the Olympic RR course in London using red padded bags which also helped showcase the line to take. The fact is that the organisers hadn’t even been back to fix the fence that Porte had been caught by the previous day.

I’ll be interested to hear from one of the local lads who was in it…

I think we’ve had quite enough of experts in this country, thank you very much.

Not to mention he’s actually ridden (or at least seen) the road in question in real life.

Whilst I wouldn’t be taking cornering lessons from CB, I completely agree with his sentiments. Crashing is part of road racing (he should know), it’s the consequences we have a right to feel angry about.