Lionel Sanders crashes at Clash Miami
Canadian star "getting into the thick of it" when he comes off his bike and has to call it a day
Photo by:
Kevin Mackinnon
The bad news is that he had to pull out of the race. The good news is that after some X-Rays, it looks like nothing was broken, so Lionel Sanders will hopefully be able to return to racing soon.
The Canadian had entered Clash Miami just this week, a couple of weeks after a huge performance at the Arena Games Montreal, where he surprised himself and many fans with a sixth-place finish. After trailing by just over two minutes after the swim at the race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, Sanders powered his way through the field on the bike, and appeared to be in a position to mix things up for the win when he crashed with just a few laps remaining.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened, but I crashed on the more technical corner,” Sanders said in a video posted by his close friend and videographer Talbot Cox. “I had done the corner 15 times up until that point and had been within three seconds every lap, so I don’t know what happened. I just took the corner too fast, lost control and went over the handlebars. I would like to continue, but my leg really hurts, so I don’t actually think I could continue and I’ve got some more races so I would like to heal. It sucks because I feel like I was in the thick of it. That’s my luck.”
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According to Cox, Sanders had his leg x-rayed after the crash and no bones were broken. Sanders is due to compete at Ironman 70.3 Oceanside next month, so he should have some time to heal before he takes on Jan Frodeno at that event.
American Jason West took the men’s title at today’s race after catching Great Britain’s Tom Bishop in the closing stages of the run. Bishop led through almost the entire bike ride and almost six of the seven laps of the run before West managed to run him down for the win.
