Simon Perrault of Androni Giocattoli Sidermec suffered facial injuries and a broken tooth when his disc brakes failed on the downhill of the Giro delle Miglia on Tuesday. It is unclear when and where the Swiss rider's crash occurred or why his brakes failed, but Perrault, presumably in a hospital in Bologna, posted a photo on social media with various bandages on his face.
The former IAM Cycling WorldTour Team rider won a stage of the 2018 Tour of Hainan while with Team Illuminate, an American Continental team, and joined his current Italian Pro team earlier this season, but seemed to take his accident relatively lightly, perhaps recognizing that things could have been much worse.
"I didn't break anything except a tooth or two, but I had the biggest scare of my life," the 27-year-old wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening.
"A rider's worst fear is to find themselves on a steep downhill and find they have no brakes. Disc brakes are great except when they don't work!"Teams these days are almost evenly split between using traditional rim brakes and the newly introduced disc brakes, with a gradual preference for the latter. Perrault's accident, however, called into question the supposed safety advantages of disc brakes over rim brakes. It is still unclear whether there was something wrong with his brake setup or whether he overheated during the very hilly one-day race.
Deceuninck-QuickStep's Mattia Cattaneo was the other crash victim in the Giro dell'Emilia, hitting a stone on a downhill with around 35km to go. Cattaneo suffered a fractured vertebra and was forced to miss six to eight weeks before resuming training.
And Perrault and Cattaneo are just two of many riders who have crashed since the season resumed in July after the March shutdown due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Well-known riders such as Jumbo Visma's Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk crashed at last week's Criterium du Dauphiné, and Bora-Hansgrohe's Max Schachmann was hit by an unauthorized car on the course of Il Lombardia last weekend. He was hit by an unauthorized vehicle on the course of Il Lombardia last weekend and broke his collarbone. Remco Evenpoel crashed in the same race, falling down a ravine and fracturing his pelvis. Belgian Dečuninck-Quick-Step teammate Fabio Jacobsen had to fight for his life after crashing in a sprint win at the Tour de Pollogne earlier this month.
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