A bad accident shakes the cycling world. The railway bike team has hit a car-in the middle of training for an actual annual highlight.
The news put the cycling world under shock on Monday evening: on Mallorca, a car raced in six drivers of the Deutsche Bahnrad national team and seriously injured the athletes. According to German Cycling, the federal government of German cyclists (BDR), “fortunately no one was seriously injured. But numerous fractures now mean a long training and competition break.”
According to the message, it was an 89-year-old driver who grasped the endurance team on a training trip with his car. The association said “headed into her head -on”, the association said. As a result, Benjamin Boos, Tobias Buck-Gramcko, Bruno Kessler, Moritz Augentstein, Louis Gentzik and Max-David Bries had come to a hard time and had to be taken to the hospital. National coach Lucas Schadlich, who accompanied the group in the car, was an eyewitness to the accident, but remained intact.
But what did the national team do in Mallorca? The answer: The Spanish Mediterranean island is considered a popular training location for cycling professionals. For example, Mountain Pass Coll de Sóller is a popular mountain training and competitive racing route for cyclists. Last year, among other things, top driver Jonas Vingegaard prepared for the Tour de France, which ended in the end of the 2024 France tour as second.
In addition to the severity, the time of the accident is also dramatic for the German national team and the BDR. How long the individual drivers will fail is not known. The fact is, however, that the European railway bike championships will take place from February 12th to 15th, 2025 in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium. Most of the injured athletes are likely to miss the prestigious competition – possibly all six.
Lucas Schadenlich will also have imagined his start as a national coach. The 36-year-old, who had previously trained the juniors in the endurance area for years, had only started the Coach of the German gentlemen in November 2024 and is directly confronted with an exceptional situation after a little more than two months.
Shortly before his start of service as a national coach, Schadlich said: “I feel ready to take over the men and give new impulses there and I am looking forward to the new task.” Now he and the BDR have to cope with a bitter setback in the development of German railway bike and primarily worry about the health of their protégés. After the bad incident in Mallorca, the European Championship should therefore probably move into the background among everyone involved.
The collision of the six German drivers by car in Mallorca is not an isolated case. It was only last Friday that the Italian driver Sara Piffer near the city of Trento was hit by a car. The just 19-year-old was killed. (Read more about this here)
Tragic deaths like this have repeatedly shak the cycling world in recent years. The Swiss young driver Muriel Furrer died last year after a severe fall at the Road Cycling World Cup in Zurich. A year earlier, her compatriot Gino Mäder succumbed to his injuries in the hospital after falling into a gorge at the Tour de Suisse 2023.