Two-time Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard had a successful collarbone operation after sustaining serious injuries in a mass fall last week, his team said on Tuesday.
The Danish Visma-Lease a Bike rider was hospitalised after suffering rib and collarbone fractures and sustaining lung damage in the shocking incident during the Tour of the Basque Country race.
Vingegaard, 27, who won the Tour de France in 2022 and 2023, is hoping to complete a hat-trick of victories this summer but the crash has put his participation under significant doubt. “Jonas had a successful operation on his collarbone,” said Visma on social media network X.
“He will now spend the next few weeks recovering. It is not yet clear how long this will take.
“He is doing well and expresses his gratitude to everyone for their kind words over the past few days.”
Remco Evenepoel also broke his collarbone in the crash on stage four of the race in northern Spain, while leader Primoz Roglic retired after he was also fell, along with several other riders, but the Slovenian did not sustain any fractures.
Visma’s other star rider Wout van Aert broke his collarbone and several ribs in a high-speed mass pile up during the Around Flanders one-day race in March.
Last week Visma chief Richard Plugge told AFP cycling needed to take action to keep riders safer.
“Let’s go, let’s start – it will not be solved in a week,” he said.
“It will take time, so the earlier we start the better it is.”
Fans who pelted Van der Poel face police investigation
Two spectators who threw a beverage can and objects at Mathieu van der Poel in two cycling classics have been identified and face police questioning, a Belgian newspaper reported on Tuesday.
A fan who threw a beverage can at the Dutch cyclist on his way to victory in the Tour of Flanders on March 31 will face legal proceedings for “assault and battery”, La Derniere Heure reported.
Contacted by AFP, the local public prosecutor’s office did not confirm the report.
Last week race boss Thomas Van der Spiegel said that “civil proceedings will be initiated when the can throwers are identified”.
Van der Poel won the Tour of Flanders, the second of the season’s five one-day ‘monuments’ by one minute and two seconds.
A week later, he was even more dominant as he won Paris-Roubaix, the third monument, by exactly three minutes even though he was again the target of a beverage can, abuse, insulting gestures and a hat thrown at his wheel on a cobbled section of the race. La Derniere Heure said journalists in the Netherlands had reviewed film and identified the woman who threw a hat. It reported that she is due to be interviewed by the French police this week.
“I felt that I had been hit by something,” said Van der Poel after the race.
“Apparently not everyone likes me riding in the lead,” he said. “But I don’t care. These people who throw cans at me are feeling a certain frustration, I think. But I don’t want to worry about that.”
In December, Van der Poel was fined for spitting at a group of abusive fans as he won a UCI Cyclocross World Cup race in Hulst in the Netherlands.
