Tanja Erath will undergo spinal surgery after crashing out of the Women’s Tour on stage 1. The Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank rider was initially taken to a hospital in Banbury on Monday before being transferred to the much larger John Ratcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
The team confirmed the news of Erath’s surgery needs to Cyclingnews after the finish of stage 2 in Walsall.
“It happened near the beginning of the race yesterday, just a touch of wheels I think that caused the crash,” the team's owner Linda Jackson told Cyclingnews.
“It happened on a straight section of road. It was pretty frightening when we got up to her. She was off the road a fair ways, in a ditch full of nettles, conscious but in a lot of pain. She was complaining about back pain and the diagnosis is a broken rib, broken collarbone that needs surgery, two broken vertebrae, one unstable ... (a 3 column fracture of [fifth thoracic vertebra] and 1 column fracture of [T-6]) and possibly a broken finger.
"She does have to have spinal surgery due to the fractures.”
