I've been riding for 18yrs give or take and have seen my share of accidents over this amount of time given I've ridden with a local Wheelmen club. However, tonight, takes the cake.

About 24 miles into my Wed night ride with some of the usual folks in the front group. We are only riding at a medium pace tonight, but still pretty fast. I'm riding outside and to the left of the pace line to get a better workout ... and because the lead isn't changing all that much as the stronger guys are pulling most of the way for the group. And, now and then we'll ride a double pace line, but not revolving ... just having a good strong ride.

We are riding a single pace line with me on the outside of the 3rd guy back having a conversation. His name is David Allen and he lives in Sellersburg, IN with his wife and two daughters ages 10mos and 4yhrs. He's a great guy and a past football player from Ohio State who's a good 6' 4" and around 250lbs ... a clyde to say the least.

All of a sudden, going down a slight decline at ~26 or 27mph, POW ... the loudest POP I've ever heard from a bicycle and I see him going head over handlebars as his front wheel collapses under the bike and he hits the pavement ... I can vaguely make out feet/legs up in the air tumbling all while the rest of the folks behind him do all they can to not ride over top of him.

I am a Red Cross CPR/First Aid instructor (training others for CPR / First Aid certification -- best way I knew how to learn it and know it myself for personal use if/when needed) and there was also a nurse riding along with us.

The nurse, Kristie, and I get to him first. He is conscious and breathing ... laying in a ditch off the side of the road (country road out in the county ... no traffic to speak of). We stabilize him as best we can. A neighbor puts ice in a bag and we put that around the HUGE gash round his eye where his sunglasses cut him down to the bone in a 1.5" wound. He's scraped up and there are no open wounds other than the one next to his eye/brow. I call an ambulance and they arrive about 8 to 9 minutes later.

He is currently in the ER awaiting results back from a CT scan. I called and spoke to his wife (also a cyclist) and she gave me an update. He is stable. Please keep David and his family in your thoughts.

Nothing flew into his wheel ... it appears spokes broke and for whatever reason (i.e. his weight, compromised rim, etc.) the wheel truly did SNAP with a LOUD pop sound which caused the rim to shatter and get caught up in the fork. The bikes stops moving forward.

Here is a camera photo (low quality! Looks a LOT worse in person) of the wheel.



It can happen to the best of us and for NO reason whatsoever and completely out of our control. One more reason to pay more attention to the overall mechanics of your bike. Not that that would make a difference in David's situation. But, I sure am going to start taking a extra few minutes before each ride to do a more thorough check.

Safe Riding!

Thats terrible, I am glad he's OK. I agree, everyone needs to pay close attention to the mechanics of their bike before every ride.

That sucks. 250 lbs can put a lot of stress on hardware.

That's amazing.
Best of wishes to your friennd.

Man, that is one f___ed up wheel! I'm supposed to go for a ride right now. I will definitely give my wheel a close scan and examine every spoke before I go. It's a good thing you and the nurse were there to help him out. Sad. . .

Here's to your friend David for a full and speedy recovery!

Yeesh. Glad he's relatively OK, and nice work with the initial care.

Don't treat bleeding with ice, though. A little direct pressure and some gentle traction to bring the skin edges reasonably close together is all it takes. The less elaborate the bandage, the better.

Thanks Dr.Pete! Yeah - Kristie applied some direct pressure with a towel and they placed the bagged ice on the outside of several folds in the towel. I'm definitely no expert in the matter ... even with a little training, when an actual "Emergency" happens, it is strange how you sort of go blank with the right things to do.

This is a pet peeve--I think it gets taught in nursing school somewhere. Blood from a wound is bad, and putting a big 'ol dressing on a wound that has potential to bleed just hides the blood longer and does NOTHING to stop it.

I remember a patient I took care of on call one night who was bleeding from her surgical incision. The nurses just kept adding more gauze to the dressing, until they called me when her HR was going up and her urine output was low (bad signs). I took down the dressing and there was a good unit of blood sopped up in this big pillow of gauze. I ended up opening the wound and throwing a stitch around a small blood vessel that was bleeding pretty briskly. I kindly asked them to call me if the dressing soaked through again instead of bulking up the dressing.

Don't feel bad--it takes a LOT of training to stay calm/cool in those situations--but you did fine.

Glad you have a somewhat positive followup report for us. Scary.

I was in a crit (Copper Mtn. Colorado) that narrowed 50% 100m after the start finish. There were hay bales on the side. Everyone was great about giving room for everyone else to get to the middle in that section. One lap, I was 2nd from the left, moved to the middle, and could just feel that the guy on my left didn't follow me. We were doing 30mph, and I barely got a chance to look back at him, to see him struggling to get his bottle back in the cage. BAM! He slammed into a wall of hay bales. The ambulance hauled him away within 2 laps. Horrifying. No idea what his injuries were though.

It looks like that rim might have failed at the weld. If so, I would contact Mavic, at the very least so they can analyze it and see if there's something they could do to prevent it in the future. It's tough to say what caused the initial failure, but the rim should not be cracking at the weld -- as the weld should be stronger than any other part of the rim. The other rim buckles and cracks appear to be at spoke holes, as you would expect.

It's tough to tell from the photo though. I could be wrong about the weld.

Scary stuff though. Thanks for sharing -- I guess

Get well, soon.

Hard to believe that the wheel could look any worse than what I see in the pic.

Wow. And i always thought that the CXP33 was damn near bulletproof.

CXP30 in that case.

Keep us updated.

I was unicycling to class this morning and saw this girl with those ugly giant "stylish" sunglasses (no room for a helmet, of course) talking on her phone and holding a starbucks iced something or other. She was approaching what we call the intersection of death (which was recently converted to a roundabout). Of course she was going without hands as she approached, saw that she was going to need to steer and tried to get a hand on the bars but instead macked the roundabout and tumbled over it. Red cross certified back in the day and always carrying first aid in my backpack, I patched up the small cuts she had.

That was one of the cases where the cyclist deserved what she got, but in the case of your friend, that's a truly unfortunate freak accident. Hopefully he'll heal up quickly and get back on the road.

That picture is the definition of catastrophic failure. I bunny hop my bike with Mavic Open Pros and Ultegra hubs with 25 mm tires off a curb everyday on my commute, but then I only weigh 140 pounds. The only other time I've seen a rim failure like that was with a mountain bike wheel brought in by a 200+ pound rider to Chain Reaction. I hope David gets better soon. I used to ride with a former Purdue linebacker. It was always fun drafting behind him.

I am also glad your friend is OK. Nice job in being there for him and hope he recovers fully.

That's scary because even if he or someone would have checked the front wheel, how likely is it that there would have been something obvious indicating a failure was imminent? Maybe yes but I doubt it. This reminds me of someone I met after his carbon fork failed on his basically new bike. His face was a mess but at least he was walking. I guess I am surprised these things happen considering how carefully designed, or at least should be, critical components are.

What you're saying about the first care is right of course. But, I'm a nurse and I was never taught to hide blood. Based on my training (oh so long ago!) I would have done exactly as you said - report it or deal with it if it soaks through the dressing unless there's some other orders involved. But my background was ER and I'm also a pre-hospital and professional EMS instructor in a past life, maybe that gives me a different perspective. Hell, I'm such an old nurse, I remember dealing with blood with bare hands

To OP: did the guy have any possible head or spinal injury? What'd the helmet look like?

I'm sure his football background helped with his fall. All those years of stretching, tackling and learning how to roll probably helped. We had a rider, also an ex football player go down and he walked away with road rash. I was 2 bikes behind him and thought for sure he broke a collar bone, but we were lucky that day. I hope your friend is fortunate too. Thoughts are with him and his family.

sorry to hear about the incident, and i hope your friend has a great recovery...

I am going to die.

Second incident reported here of rimless sunglasses slicing through a face.

Consider yourself warned and unprotected by regulatory/safety entities. It's your choice.

My training tells me to let a puncture wound bleed. An arterial bleed from a laceration should be stopped with direct pressure and a suitably sized gauze. If this is no longer accepted emergency protocol, someone please direct me to the new guidellines.

I don't believe in frivolous lawsuits, but if that were MY rim, my attorneys would be all over this. That is utterly ridiculous.

Cycling products are not supposed to friggin nearly KILL you.

Good point, also keep the glasses outside of your helmet straps, when you fall there is a better chance of the glasses coming off and not staying attached. You want them to come off in a crash.

I hope your friend gets better soon.

'Damn near' being the operative phrase here.

The only thing that's 'bulletproof' is Superman, and that's only if there's no Kryptonite around. Bike stuff breaks. Ask George Hincapie.