Olympic champ Evenepoel breaks shoulder, hand, rib

Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel has broken a shoulder blade, hand and rib after colliding with a van during training in his native Belgium.

Local media reported Evenepoel was unable to avoid the door of a post office vehicle when it was swung open. The 24-year-old never lost consciousness but the impact was heavy enough to break the frame of his bicycle.

Photographs showed the Evanepoel sitting beside an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket and holding his arm.

The incident happened in Oetingen, approximately 30 km east of Anderlecht.

"Following an incident while training today, Remco Evenepoel was taken to hospital where it was revealed that he has sustained fractures to his rib, right shoulder blade and his right hand," a statement from his team Soudal-QuickStep said.

"Examinations have also revealed contusions on both lungs and a luxation of the clavicle," a later statement said.

"The clavicle will be operated on this evening, which if successful, should allow Remco to leave hospital tomorrow."

"His bike broke in two in that incident. But it's better to split his bike in two than his arm," Soudal-QuickStep team manager Patrick Lefevere said earlier.

"He has already sent us a message, so we hope that everything is okay. From what I hear, he fell after colliding with the swinging door of a Bpost truck," his father Patrick Evenepoel had told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.

Evenepoel became the first cyclist to sweep the road race and time trial at an Olympic Games when he triumphed in both in Paris in August.

A two-time world champion, Evenepoel also won the Spanish Vuelta in 2022, two years after fracturing his pelvis in a crash, and finished third in the Tour de France this year.

"He was lying on the ground for a while," said Bart De Pelseneer, who has a butcher's shop nearby. "It was clearly a heavy blow. The door of the postal car was also completely twisted. His bike was completely broken, they folded it up like a wheelchair.

"When I went to look he looked deathly pale, the emergency services gave him a Coke. His wife Oumi was here at about the same time as the emergency services."