Remco Evenepoel has undergone surgery and says he’s “fully focused on his recovery” after yesterday’s training ride incident in Belgium, in which he suffered fractures to his rib, right shoulder blade and right hand, the double Olympic champion reportedly the victim of a dooring and “fell after colliding with the swinging door of a bpost truck”.
Evenepoel’s team Soudal-Quick Step issued an update, saying he was moved to the Herentals hospital for further treatment, with examinations revealing that he has suffered “contusions on both lungs and a luxation of the clavicle”.
“The clavicle will be operated on this evening, which if successful, should allow Remco to leave hospital tomorrow. There will then be a two-week period of immobilisation required following this, after which a plan for his return to training can be made,” the team added.
The 24-year-old world time trial champion and 2022 Vuelta winner posted about his condition on social media this morning, writing: “The comeback starts now. After a scary accident on training yesterday, I underwent surgery last night and everything went well.
“With a fracture to my rib, shoulder blade, hand, contusions to my lungs and a dislocation of my right clavicle which has caused all surrounding ligaments to be torn, it’s going to be a long journey but I’m fully focused on my recovery and I’m determined to come back stronger, step by step.
“I’m very grateful for all the help and support I received the last 24 hours. From the emergency services, the neighbours that helped me in the first moment, the medical teams in Anderlecht and Herentals and our team doctor Phil Jansen.
“Also a special mention for my wife, my family for standing by me in these difficult moments and to everyone for their supportive messages. I also want to express my support to the woman who was involved in the accident.”
There were witnesses to the aftermath, pictures emerging on Belgian news site Nieuwsblad showing Evenepoel under a blanket and being treated by paramedics, an ambulance waiting to take him to Erasmus Hospital in Anderlecht.
bpost has since confirmed to us that one of its postwomen and vehicles was involved, the employee and company “fully cooperating with the investigation” and “deeply affected by the incident”.
Evenepoel’s father, Patrick, confirmed to the Belgian press that he was taken to the hospital in Anderlecht and has “already sent us a message, so we hope everything is okay”.
“We are still on our way, but we don’t know much more ourselves,” Patrick explained. “He was taken to the Erasmus hospital in Anderlecht under the supervision of an MUG team. He has already sent us a message, so we hope everything is okay. From what I hear, he fell after colliding with the swinging door of a bpost truck.”
An image also emerged showing Evenepoel’s gold S-Works SL8 lying at the roadside with a snapped top tube.
Remco’s bike after this morning’s incident ? HLN
— Mathew Mitchell (@procyclinguk.com) 3 December 2024 at 11:09
Remco’s father’s account suggests his son may have been the victim of a dooring, an incident when a cyclist is hit by a vehicle’s door being opened by a driver or passenger.
He also suggested the vehicle involved was a “bpost truck”. road.cc contacted bpost for comment and received the following statement:
We confirm that an incident occurred this morning involving a bpost vehicle and cyclist Remco Evenepoel. Unfortunately, we cannot go into the details of the accident, but it goes without saying that the postwoman involved and bpost are fully cooperating with the investigation.
The police arrived on site to make the necessary observations. The postwoman also remained at the scene until Remco could be taken to hospital. She is deeply affected by the incident. We wish Remco a speedy recovery and hope that the consequences for him will be kept to a minimum.
Soudal-Quick Step team boss Patrick Lefevere spoke to Sporza afterwards, saying “it is better that his bike is in two than his arm” and bemoaning “such accidents [that] unfortunately happen five times a day, [because] people don’t pay attention and open their door”.
“Remco has pain in his shoulder and his hand. Our doctor is working on it,” he added.
In 2022, Chris Froome suffered minor injuries in a dooring in Monaco and urged motorists and passengers to use the Dutch Reach technique when opening vehicle doors to improve their visibility of the road behind them.
“It was literally a metre in front of me,” Froome recalled. “I didn’t even make it to my brakes. I hit the door and went flying over. I’ve just got one piece of advice for anyone getting out of their vehicle.
“It’s called the Dutch Reach. Instead of opening the door with the hand that’s closest to the door, use your opposite hand so you naturally turn your body in that way. You get to see if there’s any traffic coming or most importantly, any bikes coming. So, use the Dutch Reach. It’s extremely helpful and causes a lot less pain to our cyclists and it’s a very simple thing for you guys to do.”
The Highway Code here in the UK advises cyclists to “take care when passing parked vehicles, leaving enough room (a door’s width or 1 metre) to avoid being hit if a car door is opened”. It also, since 2022, has urged drivers and vehicle passengers to use the Dutch Reach when opening doors.
The government said at the time: “Where people driving or passengers in a vehicle are able to do so, they should open the door using their hand on the opposite side to the door they are opening. For example, using their left hand to open a door on their right-hand side. This will make them turn their head to look over their shoulder behind them. They’re then less likely to cause injury to people cycling or riding a motorcycle passing on the road, or people on the pavement.”
28 thoughts on “Remco Evenepoel taken to hospital after ‘colliding with swinging door of postal truck’ while training”
Is it an offence to door a
Is it an offence to door a cyclist in the UK? I had an idea that it was but I’m not so sure at all now.
Surreyrider wrote:
Surely it is as it would count as opening the door recklessly (i.e. without checking that it was safe to do so) and thus would count as assault or battery. I don’t think there’s a specific dooring offence.
yes, it is a specific offence
yes, it is a specific offence:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1986/1078/regulation/105/made
Yes it is illegal under both
Yes it is illegal under both
Regulation 105 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986
Section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
Fine of up to £1k but no points or prison option. Doesn’t actually require the cyclist to hit the door.
Essex police claimed they’d
Essex police claimed they’d taken action when I reported one. A few years ago mind you.
As you know, because I keep
As you know, because I keep harping on about it, the police claiming to have taken action means often that they did nothing at all or sent the joke advice letter
Yes, but lets be honest here,
Yes, but lets be honest here, it wouldn’t ever result in anything happening to someone because, you know, these things happen, how can you possibly expect people to look before opening their doors into traffic? That would be truly crazy.
I’m no pro like Evenpoel or
I’m no pro like Evenpoel or Froome but even I know to NEVER ride next to cars!
And Chris, good luck getting ALL drivers to do your Dutch Reach! Even the best of us make mistakes. It’s in every cyclist’s interest to not put ourselves in danger in the first place – be that riding next to parked cars or passing one at an intersection where they might turn without signalling (also very common.)
I hate that cyclists have to defer to this behavior but it’s in our interest to do so if we want to be riding into old age.
I read so many stories on these pages of cyclists being harmed by drivers. Many times the drivers are idiots. But sometimes it’s a cyclist simply not putting themselves into the right mindset to avoid unnecessary risk.
I may be pessimistic but i NEVER see a world where ALL drivers will behave. And it’s the one percenters we have to account for. They have to send that text RIGHT NOW after all – driving responsibly be damned! s
I’m an old cyclist and maybe jinxing myself with this, but I know where I can ride safely and where I can’t. I love cycling. But I also like walking and talking enough to respect the difference.
Problem is, someone will
Problem is, someone will paint a murder strip next to a line of parked cars. I use such a terrible piece of infra every day here in NL.
Yeah, being a pro doesn’t
Yeah, being a pro doesn’t mean anything riding among normal road traffic – having good awareness, and positional sense will count for more. I think people over estimate being a pro.
They’re pro because they have excellent fitness, and can produce x number of watts for several hours – none of which means they’re good riding in normal everyday conditions.
So the Dutch reach doesn’t
So the Dutch reach doesn’t apply to a country adjacent to Holland and in a region that speaks a Dutch dialect?
It’s not a dutch dialect, it
It’s not a dutch dialect, it’s dutch. The word for the language in Flanders is “Nederlands” – the epicentre of the Netherlands was in Flanders in the olden days. There are parts of the Netherlands that have dialects that are far /less/ “dutch” and much harder to understand for a Hollander than southern dutch is (and bear in mind, the same “dialect” is spoken in parts of the southern provinces of the modern “Netherlands” state).
Paul J wrote:
Dialect simply means a particular version of a language spoken in a specific area or by a particular group, and Flemish (or Belgian Dutch, Southern Dutch, Flemish Dutch) falls into that category. Calling it a Dutch dialect doesn’t imply that it’s not Dutch, in just the same way that when we speak of the Lancashire dialect or the Yorkshire dialect that doesn’t mean it’s not English.
“A shprakh iz a dyalekt mit
“A shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot”
More for fun with languages, scripts and categories see Urdu and Hindi, Moldovan and Romanian, Croatian and Serbian (and indeed Bosnian and Montenegrin) and in the opposite direction “Chinese” etc.
The dutch language spoken in
The dutch language spoken in the south is very different then that in “holland” we have a few collegues from up there and we often find they do not understand much of what is said.. most belgians read and write the dutch language better then the dutch do.
The world is just too
The world is just too overcrowded, and it’s not just Europe and North America… people need to slow down, else it’s quicly becoming dangerous.
This.
This.
I never feel threatened by general traffic density. It’s always (pointless) driver impatience and their utter lack of situational awareness that’s the problem.
Just today. Riding up a road with cars parked on both sides. About half way up a driver of a massive Mercedes wankpanzer starts to drive up in the opposite direction. Not a hint of any intent whatsoever to moderate her speed or road position. All the patience and situational awareness of a wasp in a jam jar.
Wow, I’ve something in common
Wow, I’ve something in common with Remco! I’ve been door’ed, too! Get well soon, fella
I was doored in the mid-1990s
I was doored in the mid-1990s, when I was not much younger than Remco is now, by a car designed about a decade before. It taco’ed my front wheel and the car door, but I was bascially fine. So I learnt my lesson, to take the lane regardless of how much it pisses off impatient drivers behind me, at little cost to myself. Nowadays, with bigger doors on bigger cars designed for bigger occupants, which are full of motors, airbags, cupholders, and are designed to close with a thunk to give the owners a reassuring feeling of quality, such lessons aren’t so cheap. Yet another thing the old have made more expensive for the young. No wonder they/we have more free time to get Strava KOMs.
I learned very early on in my
I learned very early on in my 44yr cycling career, when passing stationary vehicles ALWAYS assume a door might suddenly open, and leave an appropriate gap.
We can’t know the exact details in this case of course, but maybe Evenepoel has learnt a harsh lesson here.
As you say, we don’t know the
As you say, we don’t know the details of the case. My most recent near miss dooring came in the summer as I was filtering between two stationary lines of traffic on Finborough Road in Chelsea when a door flew open in front of me: the driver’s (very apologetic, to be fair) explanation was that a light failure warning had appeared on their dashboard and they thought as the traffic was jammed solid this was a good time to check it. On another occasion some years ago I was riding past a car which clearly had nobody inside when the back door suddenly flew open; the occupant had been looking for a dropped cigarette on the floor and opened the door before they sat up! Fortunately again I managed to react in time. On other occasions I’ve been riding in an outside lane or in primary position and had delivery drivers in a hurry undertake, brake sharply and fling the door open virtually in one movement. Not every dooring incident can be attributed to cyclists not riding carefully.
It is not uncommon for those
It is not uncommon for those who have done well in life, or who have not suffered from collisions with motorised vehicles recently, to believe that this good fortune is largely due to their own sagacity and the wisdom of experience. The corollary of this is that the misfortune of others is deemed to be largely their own fault. Evenepoel is a great athlete, and Belgium and the Netherlands seem to have more than their share of such people on bikes. However, they were all once non-famous children and teenagers like the rest of us, and had to cycle on the same roads as everybody else. My guess is that he is not a daftie who is so accustomed to riding on closed roads that he’s forgotten all the hazards of the road environment which is probably like that in the UK. The baddies just happened to get him, like they could get any of us any day, any time. I worry about this a lot!
Well said. The assumption
Well said. The assumption that a world champion professional cyclist who will train for at least 1000 hours a year on open roads in addition to his racing commitments (which themselves are hardly undertaken in a risk free environment where lack of observational or bike handling skills go unpunished), and has been doing so for many years, is somehow going to have less experience or poorer roadcraft than we mere mortals in everyday traffic conditions is quite absurd.
As a question of curiosity as
As a question of curiosity as I don’t know much about cars, I’ve noticed that many new cars have a radar system that triggers an alert light on the wing mirror (where has swldxr gone by the way?) as a cyclist approaches; do any of them have this linked to the doors so that if the driver goes to open the door as a cyclist approaches either an alarm goes off or the door can’t be opened? If not why not?
An alarm,, yes i could see
An alarm,, yes i could see that. But a door has to open in case of emergency..
Iff you do not look, you do not see the cyclist..
Keesvant wrote:
I can see that but there are other instances where a positive action has to be taken to unlock the door, e.g. with childproof locks. It should be easy to design a system whereby the door wouldn’t open normally if a cyclist or other close passing vehicle was detected but could be opened with an additional action, for example pulling the handle twice. This would mean the driver would have to take a positive decision to override the system which would mean they would actually have to stop and think about what they were doing and hopefully the majority would do so.
…. only with the iginition
…. only with the iginition on.
I have been honked at, close
I have been honked at, close passed, cursed at, and had things thrown at me because I wasn’t fully in the bike lane. The bike lane being less than a meter wide and parked cars right next to, or slightly in the bike lane. I WILL NOT ride in the “door zone”, I have had too many near misses!