Ireland's Ryan Henderson had his participation at the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships in Abu Dhabi after crashing and fracturing his ankle. The Belfast man, who was making his debut at this level, crashed during the qualifying session of the men's BMX Freestyle Park.
A slow rotation on a double flip caused his foot to slip off the pedal on landing, leading to the fractured ankle and obviously ending his Worlds. That was a disappointing out for him, especially as he had placed 10th in the Europeans in Germany in August.
Henderson described his crash yesterday as "unfortunate", adding he had been "feeling good" in the approach to the Worlds.
"Obviously I was away in France a couple of weeks ago and we got used to the size of the ramps, we drilled a lot of tricks that we were going to put down on the run," he said. "We felt like we covered all aspects of things, like my fitness is probably the best it has ever been.
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"And we were dealing with the heat quite well it didn’t really seem too heavy at the time, so I felt good going into my run. Practice was a bit hectic and I didn’t get as much time on the course as I would’ve liked, nonetheless I still felt pretty good."
He explained how his crash happened: "So, I just started off, obviously with the double flip I just went slightly too fast and rotated a bit too slow, so it was just like a small error and when I landed my feet blew off the pedals, like slapped my foot off the ground which basically broke my ankle.
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"But at that point it didn’t really feel, I just kinda felt like I tweaked it. Obviously, my adrenaline is going, I’m still in the zone wanting to do the run so I continue, and I did a few other tricks and when I came back around to do something on a spine as soon as I catch the bike again, I land a wee bit heavy on the ramp and my ankle just gives way.
"It’s a bit frustrating but we’ll come back stronger. We’re down now but we’re not out. We’ll get home, get recovered and then get back to work."
