American cyclist Sepp Kuss crashed into the netting at the Tour de France and narrowly escaped what could have been a tragic fall down a cliff.
As the leader pushing for a Stage 20 victory Saturday during the four kilometers of the course, Kuss misjudged a right-hand bend, his bicycle veered across three lanes and he crashed into the short wall separating road from mountainside. He wound up on the seat of his shorts, with his back up against the netting.
But video shows that the netting stops just inches away from where Kuss’ ride went haywire, meaning he could’ve tumbled down the side of the mountain if the same thing happened just a second or two later.
TNT Sports analyst Matt Stephens said the barrier “might have saved his life.”
“This could have been a life-or-death moment,” Stephens said. “The other side of that netting is a precipitous drop. The organizers have played a blinder.”
It was the second crash of the stage for the Colorado native Kuss, who also slipped inside a dark, wet tunnel.
“I was so on the limit, I misjudged the corner a bit,” Kuss said to the Tour’s media team. ‘First in the tunnel, and then after that I was still trying to make up too much time. It was a bit scary. Sorry to my wife and my family watching at home! That’s racing.”
A bloodied Kuss remounted his bike and finished third in the stage.
Kuss said that he wasn’t “entirely clear-headed.”
“I wasn’t too scared,” he told France Télévisions. “I thought I’d read the right line. Luckily, there were nets.
There have been four deaths in the history of the Tour de France, including the last in 1995 when Italian Olympic gold medalist Fabio Castarelli sustained a fatal head injury during a high-speed crash in the 15th Stage.
