On May 21, Ivar Slik, 2022 Unbound Gravel champion, collided with a delivery vehicle on a dirt road in north-west Arkansas, sending him to hospital via an air ambulance with a severe concussion, broken nose and other injuries. A week on, Slik had been moved out of intensive care after several days, continued treatment for a severe concussion and underwent surgery for a broken nose earlier in the day on May 28.
“The operation went well,” fellow Dutch cyclist Thijs Zonneveld told Cyclingnews Tuesday afternoon.
“Just days after the crash, it was just all about being in the moment and that he rest as much as possible and that there were no more complications. The situation every day became better and better. The main thing is that he recovers. He's doing really, really, really, really well considering the circumstances.”
Those circumstances took place on a remote dirt road about 40km south of Bentonville a week ago. Slik was training ahead of Unbound Gravel with three Dutch friends, pro cyclists Zonneveld, Jasper Ockeloen and Niki Terpstra. They had planned to race Gravelicious that Saturday, the four having completed the 150-mile Gravel Locos the week before.
Terpstra described the crash on his Dutch-language podcast, Speed On Wheels, in collaboration with Rob van Gameren, and a portion of the commentary was transcribed into text by Wielerflits.
“The four of us did a gravel ride for the first time, it was the second day we were here. We had a slight descent. Ivar and Jasper rode in front, Thijs and I were behind. We had a blind bend to the left. Out of nowhere a delivery truck comes around the corner. One or two seconds later there was a loud crash. Ivar drives head-on into that car.”
Terpstra described Slik striking the grille, headlight and hood of the vehicle, “his face hitting the front. His body flew through the air and grazed the truck”. The three riders and the driver, who had stopped, saw that Slik was unconscious, but efforts to call 911 were fruitless in that remote area.
“Fortunately he was still breathing, but his face was badly hit and bloodied. We shouted for the driver to call 911, but we knew there was no reception in that valley.”
Zonneveld recounted to Cyclingnews how the friends and the truck driver cooperated to render aid as the ‘situation was critical’, trying not to panic.
“We saw that it was severe. The three of us - Niki, the driver and me - we put Ivar in a stable situation on his side [of the road] so that he wouldn't choke on his blood or choke on his own tongue. He was unconscious. This situation was critical at the place of the accident and we didn't have any cell phone reception.
“So [Ockeloen] went back to the main road to call 911, and then after we saw that Ivar was able to move his legs and arms, so we assessed that the risk of paralyzing stuff was small, so that we could put him on a sort of improvised stretcher, to put him in the back of the van and drive him up to the main road so that the ambulance would be able to find us. We were just [on] a gravel back road somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”
He said the ambulance arrived rather quickly, and the paramedics then immediately ordered a medical helicopter, which airlifted him to Washington Regional Hospital to the south in Fayetteville.
The trio then rode their bikes back to Bentonville, 40km away, on a ride where “we didn’t talk much”. He said Terpstra went back to their house to get the rental car, while Ockeloen rode with Zonneveld so he could get medical attention for wounds to the face.
“I had to get my face stitched up because I was hit by Ivar’s bicycle when it was thrown into the air. So I had to stitch up my upper lip and they had to look at some other scars in my face. So Niki picked us up at the hospital where I went to get stitched up, and then we went immediately to the hospital where Ivar was. That took quite a while.”
The friends were all in shock about what had happened. Once a few days passed, Zonneveld said he realised it could have been worse.
“It would be a nightmare to experience that alone, and even with one person with you. If he had been alone, that would have been a big problem, in hindsight. So, you could say that we were lucky that we were training with four of us.”
The four train together in the Netherlands and Zonneveld explained they “are good friends who happen to be gravel racers, and get paid to do these kinds of race together, though we all have different sponsors”.
“Now we’re starting to think about when he gets to go home. It would be really nice if we could travel home together, the dream scenario that we could just pick him up and travel back home,” Zonneveld said about plans after Unbound this weekend. “Of course, it depends on the situation. It is up to his doctors.
“Of course, we're in contact with his father every day now, and we're trying to focus a little bit on Unbound, because that's what he told us to do. And I think as long as he's [Ivar] doing well, we can try to refocus a little bit. The main thing you can be sure is that he is really in our minds all the time.”
