Annemiek van Vleuten recovering well from Rio crash but remains in hospital

The Dutch rider will continue her stay in hospital as she recovers from a heavy crash in the women's Olympic road race on Sunday

Annemiek van Vleuten shortly before her crash. Photo: Yuzuru Sunada
(Image credit: Yuzuru SUNADA)

Annemiek van Vleuten is continuing to recover in hospital from a heavy crash in the women's Rio 2016 Olympic road race on Sunday.

According to a statement from the Royal Dutch Cycling Union (KNWU), the 33-year-old will remain in hospital in Rio de Janeiro until further notice.

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The KNWU's chief doctor Cees Rein van den Hoogenband visited van Vleuten in hospital and said: "She's recovering well. An MRI scan has confirmed that there is no further injury.

"The most important thing it is absolute peace necessary at this time," he finished.

The rider herself tweeted from hospital to thank fans for their messages and expressed her disappointment about how her race ended.

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The crash on the final descent, from a potentially gold-medal-winning position, looked extremely severe at the time which makes the relative lack of serious injury a welcome surprise.

In the end, van Vleuten's compatriot Anna van der Breggen took gold for the Netherlands, with Emma Johansson (Sweden) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy) rounding out the medals.

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Jack Elton-Walters hails from the Isle of Wight, and would be quick to tell anyone that it's his favourite place to ride. He has covered a varied range of topics for Cycling Weekly, producing articles focusing on tech, professional racing and cycling culture. He moved on to work for Cyclist Magazine in 2017 where he stayed for four years until going freelance. He now returns to Cycling Weekly from time-to-time to cover racing, review cycling gear and write longer features for print and online. He is not responsible for misspelled titles on box outs, and he lost the argument about using UK spellings