🎥 Elderly fan causes heavy crash by driving mobility scooter into peloton during Dutch junior race

Sunday was a day of crashes. In the Copenhagen Sprint, around twenty riders went down in the finale, ruling some sprinters out of contention for the win. In the GP Gippingen, Liam Slock crashed on the finish line, sliding to his first professional victory. But what happened at the Saarland Trofeo Juniors might be even more bizarre.

The Saarland Trofeo has been an important junior race for decades. Past winners in Germany include Michał Kwiatkowski, Brandon McNulty, Mads Pedersen and Søren Wærenskjold. This year's edition was once again a four-stage race, with the final stage taking place on Sunday.

Norway's Sindre Orholm-Lønseth had already laid the foundations for overall victory on Saturday, and only needed to survive the final hilly stage. He managed that with ease, but it wasn't what everyone was talking about afterwards. No, that was the bizarre crash that marred the race. A number of riders went down after a spectator on a mobility scooter rode into the peloton.

An elderly spectator rolled out onto the road and collided with Dutch talent Paul Vriesman (from the development team of Decathlon CMA CGM), who was sent into a spectacular somersault. The riders behind him had no more luck, and also slammed hard into the tarmac. Remarkably, neither the riders nor the spectator suffered any serious injuries, but it could easily have ended much worse.

It was a blemish on an otherwise excellent race for the Netherlands, who had impressed at the front all week, helped by a stage win for Liam Brugman on stage two. He took the overall lead, but lost it the following morning in the time trial. In the general classification, Splinter van 't Hoff finished an impressive second.

Vriesman responded to the incident afterwards. "The crash looked bad, but it seems I got off fairly lightly," he said in his Instagram story. "I wasn't able to make it to the finish, even though I'd been feeling better with every stage. I have no words for how this could have happened. So much work, and another step backwards."

Author: David Bavin-Hobbs | LinkedIn | Email