Two-time Olympic champion cyclist Evenepoel breaks, shoulder, hand and rib in training crash

Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel was taken to hospital following a crash during training in Belgium on Tuesday.

File Photo: Remco Evenepoel at the 2024 Summer Olympics. | Photo Credit: AP

Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel broke his right shoulder blade, right hand and a rib when he crashed into a vehicle while training in Belgium on Tuesday.

Evenepoel will be moved from the hospital in Anderlecht to another hospital in Herentals, where his injuries will be further assessed and his recovery time estimated, his Soudal Quick-Step team said.

Belgian media reported Evenepoel was unable to avoid the door of a post office vehicle when it was swung open. The 24-year-old never lost consciousness but the impact was heavy enough to break the frame of his bicycle.

Photographs online showed Evenepoel sitting beside an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket and holding his arm.

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The incident happened in Oetingen, about 30 kilometers east of Anderlecht.

Evenepoel was the first cyclist to sweep the road race and time trial at an Olympic Games when he triumphed in both in Paris in August.

A two-time world champion, Evenepoel also won the Spanish Vuelta in 2022 and finished third in the Tour de France this year.

“He was lying on the ground for a while,” said Bart De Pelseneer, who has a butcher’s shop nearby. “It was clearly a heavy blow. The door of the postal car was also completely twisted. His bike was completely broken, they folded it up like a wheelchair.

“When I went to look, he looked deathly pale. The emergency services gave him a Coke. His wife Oumi was here at about the same time as the emergency services.”