BREAKING: Ironman Hamburg HEAD-ON Crash

Watched it live. Wow..

It blocked the road at the accident site. All pros behind the crash lost 6 minutes and age-groupers coming the other way were screwed too. bottleneck on a very small road. Too many motos on course.

The road was blocked.

They shortened the bike course by 30k MID-RACE but there's no way to tell racers during the race of the course change!

No word on how they will tell racers in progress of the course change, mid-race...

Sad and tragic day for IM / triathlon.

The rider in the crash... their bike broke in half. two pieces splaying across the road.. can see on the video. and the moto went down too, in the road

Unreal.

Helicopter on scene now. very serious.

German broadcasters shook on their feed and following it closely.. The live IM feed, however, is staying clear and not talking about it at all in their commentary.

Motorcycle rider hast past away, camera man on the bike is okay and the Athlete is in the hospital. His condition seems to be okay

passed (sry)

Thanks. Yeah, caught that. German police confirmed. Weird weird day. Some pros dropping out, coverage stopped, total disarray..

Pros had to dismount the bike and hika-bike up a grass hill to get around the accident site...

See Florian Angert's IG story. Shows him cyclocross hiking his tt rig up a grass hill.

Why so many motorbikes riding all in one place during a triathlon? The thing with triathletes is that more and more of them are riding ridiculous bikes with fairings claiming to be water bottles that block their vision so many of them can't actually see where they are going, all in the name of "aero". Such as the ridiculous and dangerous bike contraptions from Joe Skipper and this guy and coach:

WOW! I've never seen anything like this before.

Seem the announcers were told there was a big crash, they didnt seem surprised at all and then proceed to say,"and this is where they get off their bikes and walk around".

If it wasn't for the police/ambulance lights in the distance you'd never have known.

The commentators saw it live and mentioned it as it happened. Greg Welch was shook and had to gather himself during the broadcast moments later. They pressed forward with race commentary. Certainly they were being told not to touch the issue until granted by IM corporation.

Deaths in triathlon..... most common in the swim.

Swim deaths are well hidden, without much fuss when they occur, unless the conditions are horrid for all and it becomes a question of botched safety by race organizers - but those swims are cancelled now. In triathlon's old days, waves of age groupers with varying ability and ages were sent out, sometimes into huge wind chop / swell (ocean and lake swims) and we would see tons of swimmers getting pulled out with some drownings.

After many deaths and lawsuits over the decades, those triathlon race safety/condition issues are mostly over. For the swim.

Today's accident harks on a problem that is still lingering in triathlon: motos on the course. Some for officiating, others for media.

The common complaint is, drafting benefits for the leaders / lead group. But also safety on some cases.

Today was worse case scenario. A small congested road, with too many motos, both media and officials, swarming the lead pack. But also with racers coming the opposite direction on the same small road. motos were in the center of the road on the yellow line, then veering into oncoming age groupers to get their media shots of the pros. There were motos passing motos at times! Motos two wide in the center, pushing cyclists to their outsides. No age-grouper expects to see a moto in front of them, coming head on. Ever.

This was particularly dramatic because it affected so many other racers, blocking the road, forcing people to scurry around the accident site on foot. The impact of this accident on the sport will be big from the coming blowback.

Side note: winner Denis Chevrot ran a 2:31 marathon. Insane! americans like Tim O'donnell don't stand a chance. We need more strong americans like Rudy Von Berg and a new crop to come up. The game has changed.

That looked entirely on just that one specific moto driver.

1) Why the hell was he passing the other motos and in that lane?

2) How the hell did he not see the bikers coming right at him?

He probably saw them very well. One of the first things you learn on a moto is whatever you fixate on you're going to run into.

This was sad to read about. But as for the race going on, I'm not surprised. I know from watching auto racing: nobody ever dies at the track. Don't know about Germany but in many US State, an accident like this would be deemed a traffic accident and once the fatality is declared, cause the closure of the road until the investigation is completed. That means they'd have to cancel the event and issue refunds. So people pretend not to say what everybody knows, and the show goes on even though everyone knows it's meaningless. So this is saddening but not surprising.

The race should have been paused until emergency personnel gave the go ahead. Imagine having to walk your bike around an active accident scene in which someone died. IRONMAN has yet to address what happened and even censored comments asking about it.

Unfortunately, accidents like this are common place at IRONMAN events and preventable 90% of the time. The organization clearly chooses the cheapest option when designing courses. This results in races being run on narrow, dangerous roads that are, more often than not, open to public traffic. Add in the motos, multiple laps, and the huge age group fields.... it's amazing things like this don't happen at every race.

In their frustration, many of the pros have become openly hostile at the pre race briefings. So many decisions are made at the expense of the athletes' safety and experience. The officials do what they can to ensure fair, safe racing but these decisions are made higher up the ladder. The greed is so obvious that IRONMAN doesn't even bother trying to hide it anymore.

Horrible that this happened. Condolences to all those involved.

Motorcycle are horrible drivers on the road. They squeeze between cars without warning, then bolt in front, cutting way to close. They used to be the worst drivers on the road, but have been surpassed by electric bike riders who will pop over into traffic just for the thrill of it.

Several years ago, the was a story about a Darwin Award winning biker. He evidently got mad at an RV driver for failing to see him as he tried to blast past him. So, he got in front of them and as payback he hit his brakes. His plan to force them to hard brake and swerve and maybe wreck failed ... the driver had no time to react in any way before driving over the ignorant biker and killing him.

IM is a joke. Was before WTC was bought out by China too. Growth and profit. Messick is a mouthpiece / tool. Prize money for pros, after all these added races, after all these years, is still peanuts (depth wise). Even if there were no safety issues ever, there is little money for pros and more and more pro cards are given each season. Makes for slim pickens in the $$$

The IM branding is out of hand and its push for profit nauseating. 70.3's on your local street corner!!

"It's just so relatable - the 70.3 distance - to average people, so we decided to put two 70.3's on the same day in the same town, but on opposite sides of town!! "North Bend" 70.3 and "More North Bend" 70.3.

Just utterly depressing.

And they have a "don't cross the center line" rule on downhill descents for some races (Nice) because traffic is coming up?? ffs. More accidents on the horizon.

Matt Hanson said on IG there was 18 motos with that front 9 on that small road. effing nutz.

The crash and its location ended the day for all pros behind that lead pack, with the subsequent bottleneck. They should have subtracted the delay times from their finish times for all the pros stuck behind the crash. Seems fair but everything is just tough luck, like train crossings blocking packs during the spring classics in Europe.

Tris are too new (and clueless) to have an etiquette like cycling where deaths stop stages / races mid-race. Fallen leaders form temporary truces in the groups. But triathlon has nothing of the sort. No teams either. Just everyone for themselves during the race.

Even many top age groupers are there looking to pr / do well. It's not all just finisher medals and tacky "IM" tattoos. So many upset people from this.

On the safety point, it was paused around the accident site. They are not sadists. The site was protected. A helicopter came in. They made racers hike around the site to continue (as you know).

Many in the live feed chat were screaming "stop the race" No way WTC would risk profit loss by refunding all that money because people couldn't finish and get their IM finish story completed.

PTO baby! Hope you are fast enough to get in the money (or fast enough to even get an entry). PTO is so stacked it's nutty. Hard just to get in for most pros.

Vlogs/pods will be lit this next week. Get your popcorn and chair ready...

Why so many motorbikes? was in a race recently and the motorbike was constantly getting in the way of the tangent. Like are the people filming thinking they are the point of the race not who they are filming? complete idiots got one of themselves killed and 2 people injured.

I am not a triathlete, but this is obviously still very disturbing. I do not want to see the video, but can someone explain what happened? Was a motorcycle driving against bike traffic and ran into the leader head on?

Please stop with your vast overstatement about motorcyclists.

I’ve been riding motorcycles since 1982 and certainly don’t ride as you describe.

My experience is that car drivers are far worse drivers, and generally treat motorcyclists as if they don’t belong on the road.

And, splitting lanes is becoming legal in an increasing number US states, with California leading the way. Lane splitting, when done slowly, carefully, is rather safe, and benefits us all..

Yeah this was horrible & is currently rocking the sport. For whatever reason, they had 12-15 motos following the front of the men's race. Looked like a 2 lane road with no shoulder and age group riders coming at the pro field from the other direction. One of the motos went into the other lane to start passing the other motos and hit an age grouper head on. 3 people involved in the crash -- 1 dead, 1 in critical condition, 1 in complete shock.

It just makes no sense. Cycling outside is dangerous enough on its own. Race day should be the exception. Ironman's silence is deafening. Their commentators on race day ignored it and even talked about course/world records (the event was shortened to move people around the crash). They still haven't responded with much of anything. Just a horrible situation.

There's a real concern in the sport with how to provide more coverage and better coverage. There's a real concern in the sport to cut down on drafting in pro races and to give out more penalties. But whatever they were going for at this race wasn't it.

It seems that the motorcycle crossed into the oncoming lane and was trying to pass the other Motos in line. The triathlete was racing in his proper lane and struck head-on by the motorcycle.

Oh, come on. If you triathletes want to get all pretentious and finger pointing about safety, you wouldn't be using aero bars outside and intentionally pointing your eyes down and putting bottles and hands in front of your eyes so you ride blind. There's a reason triathletes like Joe Skipper keeps missing turn around points on the bike, it's because he can't see anything at all with his dangerous bike contraptions and behavior. He could plow right into the back of a semi-trailer and not evening know it.