Klara Sofie Skovgaard (Canyon Manufacturing unit Racing) suffered a severe crash early within the ladies’s elite race at Unbound Gravel on Saturday, and consequently spent 90 minutes injured in a roadside ditch earlier than receiving any medical help.
Two fellow rivals, Luise Valentin (Sufficient Biking Collective) and Lucy Hempstead (Categorised x Rose), stopped their race to name for assist and stick with Skovgaard till preliminary support arrived. In keeping with the riders, it took two hours earlier than an ambulance reached the scene and transported her to a hospital, the place she later underwent surgical procedure for a dislocated, fractured shoulder and an open knee wound.
“I wished to depart my physique, and I used to be getting hypothermic,” Skovgaard wrote in a social media submit, with Valentin including that the medical workforce’s lengthy response time was “actually unbelievable.”
The incident has raised issues about emergency response logistics on the Unbound Gravel, a race that attracts the highest off-road cyclists on the earth to the rugged, distant terrain of the Kansas Flint Hills.
“Travelling internationally to race means accepting dangers, however I by no means anticipated to really feel unsafe,” Skovgaard acknowledged. “I actually hope the organisers work to enhance emergency entry.”
For the primary time in its 19-year historical past, Unbound Gravel organisers managed the advanced logistics required to supply reside protection of the elite males’s and girls’s 200-mile races, utilizing footage captured by helicopter and a 4×4 buggy. Skovgaard famous that the presence of that media helicopter overhead whereas she lay injured felt ‘ironic’, given the issue responders had reaching her on the bottom.
“I simply discover it unbelievable that a number of media motorbikes and helicopters handed by with out a single medical particular person,” Skobgaard informed Biking Weekly. “I imagine an important [thing] is that we create consciousness for different occasions sooner or later, too. My helmet was break up in two and [it] might have been manner worse. In that case, 90 minutes is just manner too lengthy. Fortunately, I’m okay and protected.”
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Regardless of the circumstances, the rider expressed gratitude towards her fellow athletes who stopped, the medical workforce and her sponsors for his or her help each earlier than and after the occasion.
“I’m without end grateful to everybody who provided assist and kindness when issues received robust,” she stated.
“I had just a few age groupers stopping by shortly, who labored as a health care provider and nurse. They gave me an emergency blanket as I used to be mendacity there. But it surely shouldn’t be different riders duty, though I’m extremely grateful for his or her kindness.”
Unbound Gravel has grown into the world’s marquee gravel occasion, providing 5 race distances and drawing greater than 5,000 registered riders, together with hundreds extra in help, media and spectators. The occasion distances vary from 25 miles to 350 miles, with the 200-mile race celebrated because the flagship occasion. The course’s distant and rugged nature is a part of the race’s enchantment and legend, nevertheless it additionally presents challenges for emergency response.
Biking Weekly reached out to Life Time for remark however as of publication, the organisers had not but issued a public assertion relating to the incident. We are going to replace the article when extra data turns into accessible.
