Can well imagine how it must have felt
TBH it’s a risk of the sport and testimony to the riders skills and bravery that we the spectating public take for granted
Good article on it on BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/65935386
Shock but little surprise
The huge sense of shock in the peloton and on the team buses at the race was clear, with a figure at one of the biggest teams saying there had been "a lot of tears" and that their riders were "distraught".
So it was shocking, yes. But there also appears to be little surprise that cycling has lost a huge talent to the pressures of competition on the road - where the gap between what different riders are willing to risk means the rewards when it comes to gaining time can be big.
Jonathan Vaughters, the boss of American team EF Education-EasyPost, said bike racing is an "inherently and incredibly dangerous sport" which involves "such high speeds and such little protection".
It is 12 years since the sport lost a rider in similar circumstances at such a high level, when Belgium's Wouter Weylandt died in a crash descending at speed during the 2011 Giro d'Italia.
Since then there have been more deaths of professional cyclists, many, but not all, on public roads during training sessions.
In addition, in 2018 the Netherlands' Michael Goolearts suffered a cardiac arrest at Paris-Roubaix and in 2019 Belgium's Bjorg Lambrecht crashed while riding in the peloton during the Tour of Poland. He landed in a ditch and hit a concrete culvert, subsequently dying from his injuries in hospital.
And the number of severe injuries caused in crashes that, mercifully, riders have survived are too numerous to mention.
They include the massive injuries sustained by Fabio Jakobsen in his horrendous crash in Poland in 2020.
Then there are also the numerous concussions suffered by riders, of which we still know so little of the mid- to long-term effects.
