Irish road race champion ‘lucky to be alive’ after head-on collision
Irish road race champion Imogen Cotter says she's lucky to be alive after she was hit head-on by a car during a training ride Wednesday.
The 28-year-old was riding near her home in Girona, Spain, when an oncoming vehicle drove directly into her that was overtaking another cyclist on the opposite side of the road.
In a post on social media, Cotter said she had fractured her patella and broken her radius bone in the crash, but she felt "lucky" it wasn't worse.
“I feel so lucky to be alive," she said wrote on social media. "Yesterday while out riding, I was hit by a car. The car was overtaking a cyclist on the other side of the road and drove head-on straight into me at high speed.”
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Cotter shared pictures of her Canyon bike, which had been destroyed in the accident.
"I was taken by ambulance to hospital, where it appears I fractured my patella and broke my radius, as well as needing quite a few stitches,” she said. “I had surgery late last night. I'm just so grateful to still be here to write this. It could have been so much worse."
Cotter recently relocated to Spain after signing with the Plantura-Pura team for 2022.
The 28-year-old previously raced with the Belgian Ciclotel Continental team on the road and rode for the amateur squad Keukens Redant in 2021.
She won the Irish national title on the road last year, but she also represented Movistar's e-team in the Zwift Premier League.
Her performances caught the eye of the Plantura-Pura squad, which has top CX riders Sanne Cant, Annemarie Worst and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado on its roster, and she signed a one-year deal with the team.
It's not clear how long Cotter's injuries will keep her sidelined, but at the moment, she's happy to have lived to tell the tale of her accident.
"I'm so lucky. I could barely sleep last night because I kept walking up thinking I could have died. I'm feeling very grateful to be here," she said.
