Annemiek van Vleuten of Bigla Pro Cycling Team is in hospital in Italy after being hit by a car whilst at the team’s Livigno training camp. She suffered multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung.
"A car driver didn’t see me, took a turn and hit me off my bike”, the 32-year-old wrote on her personal website. "The result is that I now lie here with three broken ribs and a broken collarbone. I also suffered a collapsed lung due to the broken ribs. They already helped me for that in the hospital."
“I had a very good feeling while training here and felt good. Of course this is very sour, but I am glad that I'm relatively okay and that the accident doesn’t caused lasting effects.”
She will stay in hospital for a few days before returning to the Netherlands, where “I will make a recovery plan together with my doctors."
There have been a number of such training accidents this year. Most recently, Laurens ten Dam (LottoNL-Jumbo) suffered a broken vertebra after being hit by a car earlier this week.
Van Vleuten has had a stellar 2015 season so far, winning the prologue of the Giro Rosa and Euskal Emakumeen Bira, taking a bronze medal at the European Games time trial in Baku, and landing on the podium of the La Flèche Wallonne Féminine and Festival Luxembourgeois du cyclisme féminin Elsy Jacobs.
