“You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel”: How to do lots of damage to your bike very quickly; Triathlon star Blummenfelt insists cycling switch was “possible”; Dramatic crash overshadows racing’s return at Tour Down Under + more on the live blog

Road racing returned this weekend — more on the women’s Tour Down Under in a second — but unfortunately the action was dominated and overshadowed by a high-speed crash on the final corner of the crit race that traditionally precedes the men’s edition. A spectator was hospitalised with “relatively serious injuries”, riders crashing hard into the roadside barriers on the final bend of Saturday’s Villawood Men’s Classic in Adelaide, won by Sam Welsford. This footage, captured just metres away from the incident, by Harry Holloway shows the seriousness of what unfolded.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Harry Hollaway (@harry_hollaway)

 A female spectator was taken to hospital, the Tour Down Under offering support to her family, while South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas confirmed the woman from New South Wales had “suffered relatively serious injuries”.

“To see a really awful freak accident like this occur is obviously disconcerting,” he said. “The riders, I’m happy to report, have sustained injuries as well but they will make a recovery.”

Home favourite Welsford won the crit and said afterwards he was “pretty close to the barriers” and just in front of the crash… “It was a super-fast corner. We hit it really fast. If you were going through there quite wide, anything could happen.”

ABC reported that a race official had said the riders took the corner 20km/h quicker than on previous laps, the parklands circuit previously used before the inaugural Tour Down Under in 1999 but anti-clockwise, rather than the clockwise direction of Saturday’s race.

Race director and former pro rider Stuart O’Grady said he felt “heartache” at the incident and it “hurts me more than anybody”.

“Safety is my priority,” he said afterwards. “I tell that to all the team managers, to all our staff before every Tour Down Under, the best Tour Down Under for me is a safe and happy one — and that goes for not just the spectators, but for obviously the riders.

“I’ve had high-speed crashes, I’ve lost teammates, but cycling is a dangerous sport. For the people that are out there on the roadside, we are constantly messaging, [making] social media announcements, advertising to please be aware, please stand back. Cycling and spectating at sport can be dangerous. Of course, we will do everything in our power to deliver the safest Tour Down Under possible.”

O’Grady confirmed that the course had actually been raced in a different direction to previous editions, something he believed made it “a lot safer”.

“We put a lot of effort into making sure every course is as safe as possible,” he continued. “It was actually deemed to be a lot safer in that direction because if you were there on the night you would realise that the sun actually comes from the west, which would have been right into the riders’ eyes, which I dealt with on many occasions, sprinting into the sun blind, basically. So it was actually a lot safer circuit going in the direction that it was.”

Geraint Thomas backed the race director up and called the crit “completely safe”.

“In my experience it’s always been one of the better races, to be honest,” he added. “This race is one of my favourites, it’s always been the least of my worries coming here. My only issue on Saturday was I felt like my heart was going to come out through my chest. It was such a bloody hard race.”

EF Education-Oatly survived a hectic final stage to win the Women’s Tour Down Under through Swiss national champion Noemi Rüegg, the 23-year-old having taken the race lead with a stage victory atop the famous Willunga Hill on day two.

The three-stage race, like the men’s edition which begins in the early hours of tomorrow morning, kicks off the Women’s WorldTour calendar and saw plenty of big-name riders and teams looking to get their 2025 off to a successful start.

Stage one was taken by an entertaining and gutsy 50km solo attack by Daniek Hengeveld, the sprinters having their fun ruined by the Ceratizit-WNT rider’s impressive escape. 

A day later it was Rüegg’s time, the Swiss rider seeing off some early attacks up Willunga Hill before launching an all-in bid for victory near the top, taking the stage by 10 seconds ahead of Silke Smulders.

Despite attack after attack on stage three, Rüegg and EF Education-Oatly held strong, the race leader finishing third in Stirling behind Smulders and stage winner Chloé Dygert.

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Primal Wear, the makers of some of road.cc’s older kit styles, has been targeted in a ransomware attack, Cyclingnews has reported. The breach appeared on tracking website RansomLook and suggests the attack happened in late December, with files totalling 17 gigabytes of data (more than 10,000 files) included. There is no indication customer data is affected, the breach believed to have included information relating to the company’s financial data, employees, sales and more.

 A “well respected” doctor was seriously injured as he cycled home from a GP surgery in Louth, Ireland, two weeks ago today (Monday 6 January). The hit-and-run incident saw Dr Seán Owens placed in an induced coma and he was taken to hospital in Drogheda for surgery.

More than 1,000 people turned out for a vigil to offer support and he has since made significant steps in his recovery and was able to pen an open letter to councillors calling for improvements to protect cyclists.

[Dr Seán Owens, second from the right, with the Dundalk Cycling Alliance]

The letter was reported by the Irish Independent and is titled: Why are we all in such a hurry to kill ourselves ..and the planet?

In it, Owens writes: “I am a resident of Co. Louth. I have a young family who school in Co. Louth. I work in Co. Louth and choose to cycle to and from work. I wish to spend my life here, to grow old here, to enjoy life and for my family to thrive here. I wish to see speed limits that are conducive to this plan. With current speed limits the above can all be taken away from me if a motorist isn’t looking, is distracted, or makes a genuine mistake…but at speed.”

Highlighting his involvement with Louth W.A.T.C.H club (Walking and Tandem Cycling for Health), Dr Owens explained how the club “encourages those with vision impairment, who are blind, and those with physical disabilities to use the road space of Co. Louth for exercise and leisure”.

“It is not only the lack of cycle lanes that makes this unnecessarily unsafe, but motorists’ speed. One of the aims of this club is to re-imagine this road space not just for motorists and cyclists, but for all members of society. This includes slowing motorist down, both urban and rural,” he continued.

“One of the consistent impediments to active transport that is reported is that of safety. For adults, children, leisure cyclists, commuters and more we need to slow motorists down to encourage more people onto the roads on their bikes.

“We need a suite of measures that will improve the health of the Irish population while also meeting our climate ambitions. Slowing motorists down would be a meaningful start. There is ample evidence from the literature to worked examples in the UK and through Europe that slowing motorists down will not only reduce emissions, encourage active transport but will also save lives.”

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Triathlon star Kristian Blummenfelt has spoken about the sport switch drama which erupted around the time of the Olympic Games, the Norwegian athlete stating that he wanted to take up cycling full time and aimed to win the Tour de France by 2028. Ultimately, Blummenfelt went back on the idea after a disappointing performance at the Paris Olympics.

Now, speaking to Danish broadcaster TV2, Blummenfelt explained negotiations with teams had been underway, but “nothing was finalised”, and that the final decision was his own, not due to a lack of interest.

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“It’s hard to say in exact percentage, but we talked to some teams and got some offers. So it would have been possible,” he said. “I have contracts with a bicycle brand that limit which teams I could ride for, so I had to stick to the contracts I had, the contracts with the longest binding period. 

“I had to see everything in relation to the partners and contracts I have now, but at the same time, that’s not what motivates me. If I had started a new project, it would have been the challenge itself that would have motivated me. But yes, that’s not a problem any more.”

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Uno-X Mobility directeur sportif Anna Badegruber had the (dubious) honour of picking up the first yellow card warning of the new season, after Tour Down Under commissaires deemed she had passed the peloton too closely. Near Miss of the Day: Tour Down Under edition… she was fined 200 Swiss francs…

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Blue Monday? At least you didn’t do this to your bike…

[Link to video, which might not show if you’re logged out of Facebook]

The comments section was won by Hans Coetzee for his effort: “You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel.” The general consensus on this vid appears to be the perils of failing to check your quick releases are safely tightened, the back end of the bike smashing the deck as the rear wheel decided to take its own route to the top of the climb.

I’m almost impressed by the rider managing to surf the momentum on the dropouts, I say ‘almost impressed’ because then all I can picture is the scraping and damage that poor rear mech and dropouts would have gone through. 

One commenter said they’re are “99.99 per cent sure” that quick release not being tightened was the issue, another adding that it’s a decent reminder to check your bike/brakes/quick releases etc. before every ride.

Steve Ostradick said he’d seen something similar happen on a ride once: “Had that happen to a guy I was following on a steep climb. The back wheel shot out the back and bounced off of me. Really weird. He was alright and somehow the bike survived. Put it back together and off we went.”

That’s a walk of shame… back down the 10 per cent slopes to fetch your wheel. Amusingly, the video managed to get so much attention it escaped the world of cycling forums and pages, attracting the eyes of a different kind of Facebook user… a kind of social media ranter we have plenty of experience with on the live blog.

Needless to say that particular user’s comment suggested the video is proof cyclists should need a “licence, registration and a road-worthy inspection”. There’s always one…