Lucy Buckingham OK after being hit by car while leading 70.3 Bahrain

Great Britain’s Lucy Buckingham led through the swim and bike at Ironman 70.3 Bahrain earlier today, but faded on the run as she dealt with injuries sustained after she was hit by a car out on the bike course.

We caught up with Bob De Wolf, the manager of the Buckingham’s BMC Pro Tri team, to get some details about the accident. He wrote in an email that the accident occurred somewhere around the 70. km mark of the bike course. A motorcycle was riding next to Buckingham to get some footage. The highway “was split up with one section of the highway closed off for the athletes to race … (with) big cones dividing the other two lanes for the flowing traffic.”

“Lucy believe(s) and thinks a car might have collided with another car making it swerve into the cones and Lucy ending up on the bonnet of the car,” De Wolf continued. “All in all Lucy was very lucky to end up on the bonnet and was able to continue. Her hip was very sore and she ended up struggling in the run. She had it checked out in the hospital and no major damage, luckily. The organisation has been very helpful in assisting Lucy and finding out what caused the accident.”

After leading the swim, Buckingham opened up even more time on the women chasing her, hitting T2 with a lead of 1:40 over Caroline Pohle and 5:32 over eventual champion Kat Matthews.

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Buckingham was able to hold onto her lead until 13 km into the run, but would eventually fade to seventh.

Buckingham has enjoyed two Ironman 70.3 wins this year in Warsaw and Knokke-Heist in Belgium.

We’ve reached out to Buckingham and Ironman for more details on the accident and will update this story as more information becomes available.