This must be one of the worst crashes we’ve seen in a velodrome – and it happened this week at the World Junior Track Championships in Astana, Khazakstan.

It was posted to Instagram by none other than Olympic road race champion and Astana general manager Alexandre Vinokourov with the words, “This is a tough sport!”

 

 

The event in question was yesterday’s scratch race – which eight of the 20 starters failed to finish. Hopefully none of their injuries was too severe.

– Video: Horrific crash as cyclist hits velodrome starting gate that officials failed to remove