Germany’s Arnold Fiek of the Christina Jewelry team sustained a hairline fracture to his hip and several bruises but felt he was lucky to be alive after crashing and falling 12 metres into Lake Lugano during the rain-soaked GP Lugano race on Sunday. Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani-CSF) went on to win the race but his teammate Eduardo Zardini also crashed out and fractured four vertebrae.
A photograph shows Fiek giving a thumbs up from the hospital and he hopes to be back on his bike in six weeks.
Fiek crashed early in the race, apparently sliding out on a corner, hitting a kerb and then falling into the lake. He was fortunate to land in the water and then clambered up onto a narrow concrete strip so he could be seen and eventually rescued by boat.
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Photos posted by his team on Facebook show the dramatic moments after the crash, with Fiek stuck on a narrow concrete wall as he waited to be rescued and taken to hospital.
“The road was slippery and I crashed in a right-hand curve,” 22-year-old Fiek told the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper from his hospital room in Lugano. “I tried to grab on to the guardrail, but I was unable to do so. I banged my hip against the wall and fell into the water. I swam for about five metres and then climbed up onto the wall to wait for the rescue boat.”
“I never lost consciousness. I was very, very lucky, had I fallen on my head it would not have been so good. In that first moment in the water, I thought, ‘It’s ending.’ You don’t know. Then I swam to the edge, got out of the water and it was not so bad. But then when I was on the wall, I couldn’t move. Fortunately it wasn’t so bad. I think I had a lucky day.”
His Christina Jewelry team suggested he had been lucky to escape a ‘nightmare’ crash.
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