Cyclist dies during yesterday's Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100

FATBEGGARONABIKE wrote:

I don't wish to sound cold and callous but

Subsequently going on to say "was he a bit rubbish? only, if he was, he's sort of spoiled it for those of us who aren't rubbish" does sort of sound a bit cold and callous, doesn't it?

They do ask for experience, such as sportives and how much riding you do. Some of this they can check as I presume they have the data, for instance I could put in my number from last year's event when entering this year. But yes you could overstate your ability.

I believe that the riders are sent off with the faster ones at the front. Given I passed the incident I would presume that the rider was deemed as capable as I am of cycling the distance (although I had stopped a few times by then as I wanted to enjoy myself).

So I don't think he was a "have a go" cyclist but someone who was probably capable of completing the ride.

FATBEGGARONABIKE wrote:

was he an experienced cyclist, trained to/capable of doing the ton or was he a person who thought I'll have a go at that, this could have been a reason why this tragedy happened.

I don't think it matters whether he was or not, this is a mass participation event, bit like the marathon, where coming and having a go is accepted. Sudden death can strike us all, fit or unfit, at any time.

Being the same age as the dead man, I've told my family that if I keel over on a big sportive, understand that I enjoyed doing big rides, and I accept the risks involved. Maybe he was the same.

My condolences go to his family at this sad time.

He's now been named, Stephen Green, 55, an experienced cyclist who rode the event in 2013. He was riding to raise money for Action for A-T, his fundraising page is here.

FATBEGGARONABIKE wrote:

Perhaps there should be some form of scrutinizing of the applications for the ballot, every year there are people who get a place but have retired before a quarter of the way round this obviously spoils it for others that want to take part.

I think the organisers go out of their way to open up the event to people who wouldn't normally participate in a sportive. Like the London Marathon, it seems to be promoted as achievable for most people with a normal level of fitness provided they are prepared to put some effort in to train for it. Personally I think this is realistic and they get the balance about right.

As soon as you start to vet people for experience and you are going to restrict participation to people who already ride sportives, which in my view would be utterly counterproductive in using it as a showcase to promote road cycling and change the wider perception of it as a niche activity only of interest to a narrow demographic. Of the people who signed up having never ridden close to this distance before, for every one who withdrew halfway round I'm sure there are loads more who really pushed themselves, and got round with a fantastic sense of satisfaction. This is a good thing IMHO.

At an average life expectancy of 78 years you'd get doing very rough math a 1 in 28,500 chance of an individual dying in a given day. You'd adjust that down somewhat given the ages (the average seems to be around 40) but add to that somewhat given the fitness (of being, i.e. the fact that these people aren't sick/injured to the point that they're up for a longish sportive.

However, given the fact that the average time seems to hover around 7 hours, you'd have to multiply by around 3.5. So that's about 25,000 divided by 100,000. Or about a 25% chance of one out of any group of 25,000 people will die during the seven hours ride RideLondon takes place. I'd think, however, you'd need to pool all similar events (and nail down the above math a little) to find something statistically significant.

These seem like very cold calculations given that two people died. May them both rest in peace. I just wanted to acknowledge that there does seem to be a cardiac risk incurred in being an endurance athlete. That risk seems to be much, much lower than the cardiac cost of not doing regular regular exercise according to everything I've read, but there is a danger in overdoing it. See: http://velonews.competitor.com/cycling-extremes

JamesJ wrote:

The death is very sad, but I think it is wrong to suggest it overshadowed the whole event. 1 death per day in a mixed-aged group of 25,000 is not statistically very unusual even if they weren't taking part in a 100 mile cycling challenge.

Equivalent of one death every 68.5 years…

Yes, co-incidentally almost exactly the average life-expectancy of a UK male. A rough calculation using the death rate for England and assuming a random selection of the population (which it obviously isn't) gives a probability of about 0.65 or about 2 deaths during the day for each 3 years the event is run.

I don't say this to diminish in anyway the sadness of anyone dying during an event to celebrate cycling and raise money for charity, but it is important to get the probability of this kind of event in perspective otherwise it'll be allowed to overshadow the event almost every year and add to the false reputation of cycling as a dangerous activity. Deaths from heart attacks are pretty much unavoidable in mass participation sports events and should not be compared with avoidable deaths of cyclists from road traffic accidents caused by poor road design.