I can’t read or speak Dutch, need my mates GF to translate 😀 but I’ve just seen this via Twitter and think it’s the girl from the crash

http://www.wielerupdate.nl/wielernieuws/37280/

Mods delete if I’m wrong

Google translate of link above:

21:47 – Annemiek van Vleuten is conscious after her heavy crash in the final of the Olympic road race. A terrible crash in the descent ended its golden aspirations in Rio de Janeiro. She went to the incident only in the lead.

Van Vleuten was with the American Mara Abbott jumped away from the leading group. The Dutch took the lead in the downhill. However, they crashed on a curve and lay motionless on the roadside. Chef de Mission Maurits Hendriks may confirm afterwards that Van Vleuten was to circumstances in order. They will be transferred to hospital. Anna van der Breggen Abbott finally managed to figure out. In the sprint she was supreme.

MTB is on the very last day, I believe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016/schedule/sports/cycling

Full cycling schedule here.

That’s good news. I was properly fearing something worse after seeing that.

Won’t the full face helmet, goggles, neck brace, body armour and pyjamas hinder these girls on the climbs?
You win the insensitive and stupid prize for today.

I may be wrong but perhaps another factor is that she was possibly going rather faster than DH speeds at the time

Totally disagree with people criticising the decent. All the athletes knew the risks and made the choice to ride at a speed that was ultimately beyond their limits. The descent was perfectly safe ridden at a more sedate speed.

Fingers crossed all the crash victims from both races recover well, as regardless of whether the descent was or wasn’t dangerous, no-one likes to see athletes getting badly hurt.

The mtb is 20th and 21st August.

Wrong. It’s sport. No one should be maimed or die for our entertainment. The organisers have responsibilities too.
If the IoM can manage to make a route safer, then so can Olympic organisers.

Thanks for that. The last person I saw endo, landed on their head, broke their neck and died at the scene, despite me giving them CPR. I wouldn’t want that broadcast on live TV.

This morning it was me who faceplanted the tarmac at 20 mph after hitting a pothole in a race. Just some road rash and a fine black eye. I hope she recovers as fast as I hope to.

And I too agree that the margin for error in the descent was too great. When the world’s best (road) descender comes off, it’s probably the course not the rider. I suspect slippery surface under damp tree cover. The kerb was just awful and instantly magnified any potential risk hugely.

This. Conscious is better than the alternative but there is a lot of finger crossing still to be done. Healing vibes.

Yes, but a sweeping bend taken flat out at 40+mph is no less technical than a switchback at 15mph, it’s a race, they’ll take every corner they can at the limit of their ability, which means at some point they will crash.

Just look at the Tour, how many of the crashes actually took place on horrible singletrack decents, and how many were on big wide (fast) roads, Froome coming off on a white line being the perfect example.

[Quote]Can’t remember the last time I seen as much carnage on a single descent as what was seen in yesterday’s road race. [/Quote]

Any of the cobbled classics, pretty much any year.

The argument shouldn’t be about technical difficulty, but safety. Those kerbs and ditches were horrible and needed attention, but riders crashing and getting road rash and broken collarbones is just par for the course

Fingers still crossed here.

That decent could have been made a lot safer than it was. They could have put mini bails on the outside edge of all thoes corners with massive kerbs. Riders would still be penalised for going off line but would have had a much better chance of getting up and completing the course.

Personally I’m siding with Boardman – if he thinks that course was dangerous then that’s good enough for me.

I dare say he knows more about road racing than the collective knowledge of the entire forum.

As 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.

Is the TT course similarly furnished? I wonder if anything will be done before Weds?

According to the commentators, they hadn’t even put back the netting that Porte went through…

A course that maims some of the best riders, male and female, is a bad course.

The penalty for error should not be potentially career ending.

The riders are crashing at motorbike speeds with only a thin layer of lycra for protection.

Yes, but he’s not talking about the corners, he’s talking about the kerbs and ditches. Some on here are arguing that the corners were the dangerous bits for causing crashes in the first place.

“I went down and had a look at the course and saw those edges. We knew it was way past being technical; it was dangerous. The people who designed the course and said what safety features were needed had seen it as well and left it.

“We knew the descent was treacherous. I looked at that road furniture and thought, nobody can crash here and just get up. It is really bad and that is what we have seen today.”