So after attending a concert on Friday night, I came back to my bike locked outside the club, unlocked it, got on it, and immediately heard a clanging noise after doing a few meters. It was pretty clear a spoke was broken and was banging against the frame. The reality turned out to be somewhat different - the clanging noise was indeed a spoke banging against the frame, but it was not broken; instead it was ripped clean out of the rim together with the spoke head, destroying the rim in the process. Since the rim is double-walled, it was still rideable, so I could get home allright. Inspecting the rim afterwards in better lighting, I found several other faults - one where the rim was about to split open as well, and some 6 or 7 other spoke holes with cracks around them. It is possible that some of those happened while riding on the damaged rim - it's highly likely that the second worst damage went from mere cracks to the point of just before splitting open during the ride, but I suspect the cracks have been around earlier.

Now, it doesn't matter as much if the damage comes from someone kicking the bike while locked outside the club - which, while unlikely, is possible; but in either event I would expect the spokes to break before the rim. Seems that the rim itself is of poor quality. I weigh around 95 kg, the bike itself around 14, I haven't done any jumps on it apart from the occasional hop off the curb, and haven't hit it hard against any obstacles. The rim has done around 5000 km at this point. These come as stock for the Focus Crater Lake, and are manufactured by Schürmann, Germany, as is indicated on the rim.
What do you think?


The worst bit of damage. note that there aren't any dents on the rim, and the spoke is intact


This one seems to be ready to split open at any moment


Cracks around the spoke hole