Horrific crash at finish line leaves Dutch cyclist with serious injuries
“Fabio Jakobsen’s situation is serious but at the moment he is stable,” his Deceuninck-QuickStep team said in a statement. “Diagnostic tests didn’t reveal brain or spinal injury, but because of the gravity of his multiple injuries he is still kept in a comatose condition and has to remain closely monitored in the following days.”
Jakobsen underwent five hours of facial and skull surgery Wednesday night at St. Barbara’s Specialized Hospital in Sosnowiec and doctors planned to try to bring him out of the coma Thursday, the team said. “There is no direct threat to his life now,” Pawel Gruenpeter, a doctor who is the hospital’s deputy director, said Thursday via the Associated Press. He described the surgery as “very complicated due to the nature of the injuries” and added that there had been “no complications.”
Cycling’s international governing body immediately disqualified Groenewegen and said a disciplinary commission would determine whether to sanction him. His Jumbo-Visma team planned an internal review. The governing body, known by its French initials UCI, awarded the victory to Jakobsen and said it “strongly condemns the dangerous behavior of rider Dylan Groenewegen.”
On Thursday morning, Groenewegen tweeted: “I hate what happened yesterday. I can’t find the words to describe how sorry I am for Fabio and others who have been dropped or hit. At the moment, the health of Fabio is the most important thing. I think about him constantly.”
Groenewegen’s Jumbo-Visma team tweeted that “crashes like these should not happen” and offered “sincere apologies.”
When the two cyclists collided, race organizer Czeslaw Lang admitted in a statement that he “feared the worst” and was “somewhat relieved” at learning of Jakobsen’s condition. A race official who was also involved in the crash, sustained a head injury and was described by Lang as conscious and in stable condition.
Fellow cyclists reacted to the crash with support for Jakobsen and anger about how he was forced into the barricade.
Armstrong, the disgraced former cycling champion, tweeted: “Hang in there buddy. Been around this game a long time and not sure I’ve seen a crash that horrific. FabioSTRONG!”
Belgian cyclist Jasper Philipsen, one of the cyclists involved in the wake of the collision, tweeted: “This was not the way I hoped to reach the finish line. My biggest concern now is Fabio Jakobsen. Thoughts are with him, Deceuninck-QuickStep and his family!”
Simon Geschke, who rides for the Polish CCC Team, questioned the way the race is designed. “Every year the same silly downhill sprint in the @Tour_de_Pologne,” he wrote in a tweet that was shared by Philipsen. “Every year I ask myself why the organization thinks it‘s a good idea. Bunch sprints are dangerous enough, you don’t need a downhill finish with 80 kph [about 50 mph]!”
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