France’s Loana Lecomte crashed heavily as she was descending the rock garden during the women’s cross-country mountain bike at the 2024 Paris Olympics and had to be stretchered out from the course to get medical attention. Lecomte was part of a chasing group, battling for a medal behind her compatriot Pauline Ferrand-Prévot who had attacked solo off the front and went on to win the gold medal.
The 24-year-old rider was immobile on the course for a few minutes, with a French journalist on-site reporting that the rider had briefly lost consciousness after the brutal crash. According to L’Equipe, Lecomte suffered head trauma from the hard crash and a “relatively minor jaw injury.”
Thankfully, she was soon after reported as being conscious and when speaking to France TV, the coach of the French mountain bike team reassured her situation wasn’t as bad as it first seemed. “Loana has a facial trauma that will not be serious in the end, she will recover and come back stronger,” he said.
Lecomte was later pictured leaving Élancourt Hill with bandages on her arm and face but smiling after escaping the initially scary incident seemingly without too much harm done.
“We can imagine her pain: we saw her ready too today , in the first two laps. Loana is instinctive. She comes from alpine skiing, she is not afraid of commitment at all. She rides at 100 km/h, she jumps… As she is young, we will be able to correct that. We will surround her and be there as we were with Pauline (Ferrand-Prévôt) after Rio,” France mountain bike coach Yvan Clolus told L’Equipe.
A pre-race favourite to medal, Lecomte was at the pointy end of the race from the start at Élancourt Hill. She was part of an early quartet, along with Ferrand-Prévot, that separated itself from the 36-rider pack on the first 4.4km lap. Lecomte could not stay on the wheel on Ferrand-Prévot’s blistering attack on the next lap and fell back into a chase group that included Jenny Rissveds (Sweden), Laura Stigger (Austria) and a surging Haley Batten (USA).
Disaster struck on the rock garden for Lecomte on lap four, as she was descending behind Stigger. She stayed down for a momentarily after hitting the bottom of her head on the ground before being quickly attended to by medical personnel.
With a focus on the Olympic Games, Lecomte skipped to Les Gets World Cup in early July for a training camp in the mountains, after she had taken a single victory at the Crans-Montana round.
Last year, Lecomte won silver at the Glasgow World Championships cross-country mountain bike behind Ferrand-Prévot, and she also dominated at the mountain bike Test Event at Élancourt Hill, last year.
Get unlimited access to all of our coverage of the 2024 Olympic Games – including breaking news and analysis reported by our journalists on the ground from every event across road, mountain bike, track and BMX racing as it happens and more. Find out more.
