Tragic Plane Crash Claims the Lives of Top 3 Cycling Riders Today….

Ed Hood, as spoken to Martin Williamson from the passenger seat, driving along a stage route at the Tour de France.

Dear Readers – Our beloved colleague and friend Ed Hood suffered a serious stroke in February. We don’t expect Ed will make it back into our bunch, so we’ve started a GoFundMe page to help Ed with his future. Read the full post here – and please consider donating.

We’ll be posting a selection of Ed’s work from the past 16 years, because great story-telling never gets old.

Crashing Out: Egan Bernal’s terrible and possibly career ending crash has brought back many memories of riders who were never the same after a similar ‘misfortune’. Ed Hood takes a look at the riders whose cycling careers were cut short due to an accident. You could say ‘lucky to be alive’ as there has been much worse outcomes.

Egan Bernal’s recent terrible crash reminded us all just what a dangerous game professional cycling is. Even in training, where pros are riding at high speed on open roads, sharing them with other road users who may well not be fans of the sport and view cyclists, whatever their name, as a nuisance. And, as on this occasion with the Colombian, sometimes on time trial bikes – not the best beasts for executing rapid evasive measures, designed to go very fast, in a straight line.

There’s a school of thought that’s saying Bernal’s brilliant but still early career will be ended by this crash – he only recently turned 25 years-of-age. He’s being treated at the Clinica Universidad de La Sabana who said that the 25-year-old is in the intensive care unit following procedures to repair his fractured femur and kneecap as well as spinal surgery to,

“keep intact the neurological integrity and conserved the functionality of the segments involved. The neurosurgery team carried out a reduction of a displaced fracture from the T5 [vertebra] to the T6 [vertebra] with a traumatic herniated disk. Under constant monitoring for nervous system activity, a tool was put in place from the T3 to the T8.”