How hard and dangerous is bicycle racing?
05-10-11, 06:24 AM
#1
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How hard and dangerous is bicycle racing?
J. Vaughters has it about right:
“Quite frankly, on the level of athletes putting their safety on the line for a sport, the American macho sports like football and other typical ‘guy sports’ are a joke,” Vaughters said in a telephone interview. “The perception is that bicycle racing is cute and fun and, ‘look at all the pretty colored jerseys going down that mountain pass,’ but it’s an unbelievably brutal and dangerous sport with no margin for error.”
“Quite frankly, on the level of athletes putting their safety on the line for a sport, the American macho sports like football and other typical ‘guy sports’ are a joke,” Vaughters said in a telephone interview. “The perception is that bicycle racing is cute and fun and, ‘look at all the pretty colored jerseys going down that mountain pass,’ but it’s an unbelievably brutal and dangerous sport with no margin for error.”
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05-10-11, 06:40 AM
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Absolutely.
05-10-11, 06:54 AM
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Not a joke compared to football. Those guys incur significant risk and take a severe beating and most pay for it for the rest of their lives. Downhill racing (and maybe super G) is also damn tough, as is luge, maybe bobsled. Motorsports - Nascar to F1 are much safer than pro cycling. All the other major sports are a joke - baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, etc., and even hockey are simply pedestrian in comparison.
05-10-11, 06:58 AM
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Food for thought . . . take the pads and helmets off football players and let's see who racks up the most injuries.
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05-10-11, 07:18 AM
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Getting back to the OP, there are different risks. Risk of fatal crashes may be higher in road cycling compared to NFL or NHL, but odds of getting injured are far higher in those sports.
Pretty much every other week I was sporting an injury while playing club-level hockey. Messed up my knee after getting low bridged, damage to my left eye from a freak collision/fall while playing pickup rollerhockey, fractured cheekbone in the same accident, etc. etc.
The hockey injury was actually more severe (in terms of permanent damage) than a laundry list of broken bones, concussions and other injuries sustained over 19 years of martial arts.
Yes, road racing is hard and dangerous. So are contact sports. Trying to compare the two and somehow making one to to be riskier than other is a bit childish, IMO.
Last edited by guadzilla; 05-10-11 at 07:24 AM.
05-10-11, 07:23 AM
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hes right, of course, but the context in which that was said, in an interview about weylandt's death, it was completely obnoxious and inappropriate. par for the course for him though really.
05-10-11, 07:36 AM
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I don't even race and I consider cycling the most dangerous sport I've ever participated in. Heck, this spring alone I've had two drivers threaten to kick my ass! 
05-10-11, 07:37 AM
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the risk factor is off the charts, especially when you compare it to a sport like golfing.
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05-10-11, 07:38 AM
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Not a joke compared to football. Those guys incur significant risk and take a severe beating and most pay for it for the rest of their lives. Downhill racing (and maybe super G) is also damn tough, as is luge, maybe bobsled. Motorsports - Nascar to F1 are much safer than pro cycling. All the other major sports are a joke - baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, etc., and even hockey are simply pedestrian in comparison.
05-10-11, 07:41 AM
#12
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Calling other sports 'a joke' with respect to risk is silly. Plenty of sports carry significant risk of injury, but the risk of mortal injury in pro road cycling is higher than in any sport short of auto racing in my view. I think that's Vaughter's point. The world perceives cycling as some kind of pansy sport, but the truth is quite the opposite.
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05-10-11, 07:52 AM
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Alas, yes. I'm with badhat on this - why start the measuring contest as to whose sport is more dangerous? I don't think of cycling risk as anything to be crowing about. It is a shame that cycling doesn't register on the radar of significant sports for most of N. America, but using its danger as some sort of macho hook doesn't necessarily help either. I'd rather focus on the endurance, the suffering, the team work, the tactics, the overcoming adversity etc, etc
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05-10-11, 07:53 AM
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everytime vaughters opens his mouth he just vomits up weird inferiority complex chest thumping nonsense.
05-10-11, 08:00 AM
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I think JV is right about this. Compared to the mortal risk involved in bicycle racing, the only sports that really compare are auto and motorcycle racing.
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05-10-11, 08:00 AM
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05-10-11, 08:01 AM
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It's called Aussie rules.
Getting back to the OP, there are different risks. Risk of fatal crashes may be higher in road cycling compared to NFL or NHL, but odds of getting injured are far higher in those sports.
Pretty much every other week I was sporting an injury while playing club-level hockey. Messed up my knee after getting low bridged, damage to my left eye from a freak collision/fall while playing pickup rollerhockey, fractured cheekbone in the same accident, etc. etc.
The hockey injury was actually more severe (in terms of permanent damage) than a laundry list of broken bones, concussions and other injuries sustained over 19 years of martial arts.
Yes, road racing is hard and dangerous. So are contact sports. Trying to compare the two and somehow making one to to be riskier than other is a bit childish, IMO.
Getting back to the OP, there are different risks. Risk of fatal crashes may be higher in road cycling compared to NFL or NHL, but odds of getting injured are far higher in those sports.
Pretty much every other week I was sporting an injury while playing club-level hockey. Messed up my knee after getting low bridged, damage to my left eye from a freak collision/fall while playing pickup rollerhockey, fractured cheekbone in the same accident, etc. etc.
The hockey injury was actually more severe (in terms of permanent damage) than a laundry list of broken bones, concussions and other injuries sustained over 19 years of martial arts.
Yes, road racing is hard and dangerous. So are contact sports. Trying to compare the two and somehow making one to to be riskier than other is a bit childish, IMO.
05-10-11, 08:04 AM
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05-10-11, 08:08 AM
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Is JV right?
NO - “Quite frankly, on the level of athletes putting their safety on the line for a sport, the American macho sports like football and other typical ‘guy sports’ are a joke,”
Really? - “The perception is that bicycle racing is cute and fun and, ‘look at all the pretty colored jerseys going down that mountain pass,’
NO - "but it’s an unbelievably brutal and dangerous sport with no margin for error.”
badhat is right. JV has an inferiority complex.
NO - “Quite frankly, on the level of athletes putting their safety on the line for a sport, the American macho sports like football and other typical ‘guy sports’ are a joke,”
Really? - “The perception is that bicycle racing is cute and fun and, ‘look at all the pretty colored jerseys going down that mountain pass,’
NO - "but it’s an unbelievably brutal and dangerous sport with no margin for error.”
badhat is right. JV has an inferiority complex.
05-10-11, 08:13 AM
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Although I think it was Steve "Interesting" Davis who said snooker wasn't really a sport, on the basis that anything you could do while smoking a cigarette didn't really count as sport.
05-10-11, 08:40 AM
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I had to stop playing hockey because of damaging my left knee, which still gives me hell to this day. I often times couldnt walk the day after a game. Ask players that have been hit my Nick Kronwall or Scott Stevens if Hockey isnt dangerous.