Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Chris Harper (Jayco AlUla) both crashed at the same spot during the descent from the Passo del Vetriolo on stage 4 of the Tour of the Alps, with O'Connor blaming an unmarked kerb for the wrecks.
O'Connor told his soigneurs and race leader Juan Pedro López (Lidl-Trek) that he couldn't see the change between the road and kerb as "they were the same colour" on a high-speed bend.
The Australian duo were in pursuit of the eventual stage-winner Simon Carr (EF Education EasyPost) and attacking the descent of the Passo del Vetriolo climb with 24.5km to go in the queen stage when the crashes occurred.
Harper went down first very hard after bumps in the road forced him to run wide into the kerb and crash on his right shoulder before sliding head-first into a lamppost.
Harper was forced to abandon due to his injuries but thankfully was seen sitting up and talking to both race doctors and team staff who were on site very quickly after he went down. No Further update has been provided by the team as of yet.
O'Connor managed to remount his bike and get back into the remaining group of favourites albeit with a small cut to his face and right hand. He was also seen testing out the use of his wrist on the remaining 25km of the race after hitting the deck.
Miraculously, despite being dropped at times in the final run to the line, he came back to the group of favourites and still had enough to attack in the final kilometre. O'Connor took third on the day behind Carr and Michael Storer (Tudor) and moved up to second on GC now 38 seconds behind Juan Pedro López (Lidl-Trek).
But after passing the line he struggled to unclip once he reached his helpers before taking a seat on the curb and debriefing what had happened.
He examined his hand without his gloves but appeared to escape relatively unscathed considering the speed of the crash, revealing that he tried to bunnyhop the kerb once he realised he was going to hit it.
"The road looks the same, you couldn't see the kerb. It is the same colour and I just took it. It wasn't until I got to the barrier that I was like 'fuck' and jumped," O'Connor said.
"I'm fine after the crash. I just made an error in this fast descent, I really didn't see the end of the corner," O'Connor said later on social media.
"It's a bit annoying but in the end I was still third today and took some more seconds in the general classification. I can be pleased with how it went, the legs were really good all day, just in the end after the crash my body was a bit shaken, but I'm OK. Tomorrow it's all in, I guess."
López reaffirmed what the Australian had said when they spoke after the finish line, with the Spanish rider saying that he just got unlucky after he had been riding really well.
"I actually went to look for Ben after the finish because I wanted to congratulate him for what he had done in the descent. He was riding really well, going down very fast but he was unlucky," López said in his post-race press conference.
"He crashed because there was a sort of mismatch in the road which was exactly the same colour as the road so it was just a matter of bad luck because he was actually going very well in the downhill."
