The first cycling Grand Tour of 2011 is underway, and three days in, it is already filled with drama and extreme sorrow.
The drama is the sort associated with highly competitive professional racing. The sorrow comes from the death of a rider: also part of the incredibly dangerous sport of cycling, but one thankfully rare enough, it is usually forgotten.
26-year-old Belgian Wouter Weylandt, a rider with the Leopard-Trek team, crashed on a difficult descent and died of his injuries.
Wouter apparently went over a wall on the side of the road and fell 60 feet to the pavement below. Paramedics were on the scene almost instantly and made every effort to revive him. He sustained head injuries so severe, there was nothing the doctors could do.
“It’s the unthinkable,” race leader David Millar told VeloNews.com. “It’s probably a one-in-qa-million thing if you had to put a number on it. At the same time, it could happen on any corner or descent. The bottom line is, the guys who are here and racing are the best cyclists in the world, but the best can have a mechanical or can find themselves in the wrong place or the wrong time and have that happen.”
