The UCI and the native organising committee on the Street World Championships in Zurich have stated they’re unable to offer any data on the circumstances of Muriel Furrer’s deadly crash on the junior girls’s street race as a result of an ongoing police investigation.
Furrer was airlifted by helicopter to Zurich College Hospital after sustaining a severe head harm in a crash throughout Thursday’s race. The Swiss rider, who raced at worldwide stage in street, cyclocross and mountain bike, died on Friday on the age of 18.
In a brief press convention in Zurich’s Kongresshaus on Friday afternoon, UCI sport supervisor Peter Van den Abeele and Olivier Senn of the organising committee confirmed that the remaining World Championships races would go forward this weekend on the request of the Furrer household.
Van den Abeele and Senn had been unwilling to reply questions on the circumstances of Furrer’s crash and the timeliness with which she had obtained therapy for her accidents.
Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung has reported that Swiss Air-Rescue (REGA) had confirmed that its first helicopter mission within the Zurich space on Thursday had departed at 12:52 pm, greater than an hour after the end of the junior girls’s street race.
“As Peter acknowledged, there’s an investigation occurring by the general public prosecutor and the police. We now have no safe data in the interim, and subsequently we won’t touch upon this,” Senn stated.
“There is no such thing as a safe data, and which means all the things that’s out there’s hearsay. I wish to ask you to additionally respect the household. Please use wherever potential information and never rumours.”
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Reviews in Swiss media have prompt the crash occurred within the forestry above Küsnacht on the World Championships ending circuit, although the UCI and the organising committee had been unable to verify the exact location.
“Not but,” stated Senn, who added that extra security checks had taken place on that part of the course forward of Friday’s under-23 males’s street race.
“We now have clearly seemed on the scenario which occurred there yesterday. We now have barely amended the employees on-site, particularly as a result of within the afternoon when it began raining once more, not realizing if that had any impression on the accident.
“As all the time, we imagine we do all the time the utmost on the security and safety of the riders. The downhill was checked out once more simply right now with the rain on website.”
Requested if the timing chip in Furrer’s bike had been used to find her after the crash, Van den Abeele stated, “The investigation remains to be occurring, however certainly the examination of the trackers will probably be utilized by the authorities.”
The under-23 males’s street race was already underway when Furrer’s dying was introduced on Friday afternoon. The rostrum ceremony afterwards came about with out music or the taking part in of the nationwide anthem, and Saturday’s UCI Gala has been cancelled, however Van den Abeele confirmed that the rest of the racing programme, together with the elite street races, would go forward this weekend.
“The UCI is respecting the needs of the household by persevering with to carry the World Championships,” he stated.
Furrer’s dying is the second such tragedy in Swiss biking in somewhat over a 12 months, following Gino Mäder‘s deadly crash on the 2023 Tour de Suisse. Senn is the director of the Tour de Suisse in addition to the deputy basic supervisor of the Zurich 2024 organising committee.
“Clearly, it is one other tragic dying. It has a number of similarities and comparable emotions,” Senn stated. “However right now shouldn’t be about Gino. At this time is about Muriel, and my ideas are along with her household.”
