Andreu Lacondeguy Out of Red Bull Rampage 2021 After Practice Crash
After a first session at the bottom of the mountain on the section of his line that he shares with Ethan Nell yesterday, Andreu Lacondeguy headed higher up the mountain to test some of his new features up there. He was testing the speed on one of his jumps mid-mountain and went deep, crashing over the bars in what he says is his hardest ever hit. He's going to get surgery early next week for the broken bones.
 | I wish that I would never had to post this but it is what it is. I had a terrible crash last night on my first practice for Rampage. I over jumped a technical section of my line and ended up hitting the ground harder than I ever did. Gonna get surgery early next week to get all fixed and I hope I can start moving in the next 3 days. This is one of the most painful moments of my career, mentally and physically, the broken bones hurt but not being able to ride the event after all I been through this last year is what hurts the most. I Want to thank my team @lluislacondeguy @markmtbmcclure for all the hard work and all the help , also big thanks to @h5events and his medical team for getting me out of the mountain in one piece, also huge thanks to all the riders and diggers for the help and kind messages, I wish you all the best on the next days and I hope everything works out for you guys. |
You can see a video of the crash here.
We are devastated that this means we won't be seeing Andreu during finals and we wish him all the best with recovery.
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173 Comments
Always entertaining and always so excited to be just riding!!
Practice Crash sounds like the rider helmets up, and says something like "well about that time to work on my eat it skills"
does anybody know why he is not a Red Bull athlete (helmet) anymore?
I know that's wishful thinking to see anything intelligent stemming from Pinkbike's comment section. But hey, I'll give it a shot a see where this goes:
Is this a text-book overshot ? Too much speed, resulting in being to far stretch at the end of the landing ?
Suspension setting for freeride being so stiff they absolutely need to hit the landing's sweet spot ?
Or no matter the suspension setting the speed and heights of that overshot was irremediably leading to a crash ?
1 // Brandon Semenuk
2 // Andreu Lacondeguy
3 // Kurt Sorge"
You did this Pinkbike... you did this. With your 2nd place vibes out there in the world. May this shame be forever on your head.
Heal up well!!
These athletes are hucking off wilder and wilder stuff every year and it will continue to be pushed until, eventually, there is a tragedy. I feel like it's only a matter of time before I'm reading about someone's death on Pinkbike.
I do not know what the solution is. We can beg these guys to not go big, but come on, we know they will as long as events like this exist.
Safety gear is getting better and better but its woefully inadequate for events like Rampage. Short of an instant-inflatable-ball-thing that surrounds a rider in a cozy shell the moment before a crash, I don't know how you make an event like this remotely "safe".
A similar mistake on one of the many much, much larger features could be fatal. Thank god for modern medicine, but my main concern is a broken neck or massive internal bleeding that can't be stopped before an airlift to a hospital.
I'm not here to tell athletes what they can and cant do, nor do I want anyone to.
But perhaps we can look at events like Rampage and say "Hey Redbull, awful lot of money you got there. How about you toss a couple mattresses around the course or something huh?"
Obviously for Rampage the sample size is smaller and the exposure time is quite short, but look at the injury list for DH this last year and some of the injuries (Thibault!) - and it’s a UCI sport, with a stack of events - the exposure time is huge!
Seems like you could apply the “but someone’s gonna die” to DH too. Those legends that are pushing the limits eventually find them.
Heal up Andreu! I hope someone else can deliver on the looseness you bring.
For the most part the lines are groomed out a lot better than they used to be. (for a lot of the guys).
He hits stuff that big and bigger ALL the time. Hell he's got bigger stuff at his house.
Will someone die eventually? I sure as hell hope not but it's possible. But it's also possible that they die on the shitter or just riding down a trail.
These guys are experts and are doing their best to mitigate risk while pushing themselves and entertaining us idiots.
Brendog was taken out racing downhill. Rheeder crashed on a slope course that he built.
Let the athletes make their own judgement on what is safe and not. They are professionals and know what they're doing.
Compare that to a WC where you have 80-100 riders, taking multiple runs, at 8 races per year. Even if you just boiled it down to the top 50 men in DH, applying an injury rate like Rampage would be a huge amount of guys going down. Even if you just used the lowest rate of 1 out of 20 rampage riders getting hurt, that 5%. If 5% of the top 50 DH men went out each round, you'd lose 17 or the top 50 by the end of the season. While it seems like alot of injuries in DH recently, its still not really anywhere near as bad as Rampage at least statistically.
Yeah that’s fair.
I think what I’m getting at is more comments like “someone’s gonna die” doesn’t just apply to this event. MTB athletes are pushing the limits and those consequences at more than just Rampage, and is events which are perceived as safer, or with less risk involved.
The risks are what intrigues us, it’s the underlying appeal of these sports.
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