Cyclists in Rio are crashing and breaking their bikes on bumpy cobblestone roads

Cyclists in Rio
(Image credit: Eric Feferberg/Getty Images)

Olympic road cycling is a six-hour event taking athletes on a scenic tour of Rio this year — and it also includes a super bumpy ride on a one-mile stretch of cobblestone road. The bumps were so bad Saturday morning that multiple cyclists had to stop and repair their bikes after the chains popped off, while Ahmet Orken of Turkey took a nasty fall.

"I'm surprised someone signed off on a course this hard," said New Zealand cyclist George Bennett. "It's hectic, it's dangerous. There are slippery roads, patches of oil, difficult corners. It could send you home early."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.