Wiggle Honda cyclist Dani King has suffered five broken ribs and a collapsed lung after hitting a pothole while out on a training ride.
Crashed whilst out training yesterday resulting in 5 broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Being looked after by the amazing NHS ICU in Wales.❤️
— Dani King (@DaniKing1) November 7, 2014
The 23 year old Olympic Gold medallist hit a hidden pothole throwing her off the bike. Dani’s agent, Steve Fry was quick to respond to the incident:
“The accident happened on a B-road between Merthyr Tydfil and Quaker’s Yard and what happened was one of the cyclists with who she was riding went over a pothole that was covered with water due to the wet weather we’ve been having.
“It led to Dani crashing off her bike with the resultant injuries she has talked about on her twitter account. The injuries are clearly painful and serious and we can only hope she gets better soon.
“She is having fantastic treatment from the doctors and nurses looking after her and is very happy with the medical attention she’s getting. It’s too early to say yet when she’ll be back in training and back competing.
“I think it’s time local authorities in the UK started spending more money on repairing roads to ensure things like this don’t keep happening. We’d like to see £10 per head of population spent on cyclists in terms of maintenance of cycle paths and roads.”
Potholes are a source of frustration for every cyclist, we can only hope that this incident will result in action from local councils. In the meantime it might be no harm to check out our guide to successfully negotiating and riding over potholes.
Thankfully Dani is on the road to recovery. But the next person to suffer such an incident may not be so lucky. We hope that this will kickstart local councils to take action to make the constituencies safer places for road users.
Also worth a read:
How to successfully conquer potholes
