Dylan van Baarle rushed to French hospital after horrific Paris-Roubaix crash: "I was in the ER without a phone and there was no family, so I couldn't reach anyone"

The disappointing 2023 Classics season of Dylan van Baarle continued last Sunday at Paris-Roubaix. Defending the title he won last year, the Dutchman was taken out by a horrific crash and rushed to a local hospital to get medical attention.

“I turned tenth or eleventh into the Bos van Wallers, Fred Wright had a flat front tire in front of me. Then it's hoping you stay upright, but his bike went to the right and his body to the left. I ran over his bicycle and was also lying on the ground,” van Baarle recalls on the podcast 'In Koers' for the Algemeen Dagblad. “I immediately noticed that my whole body was aching and my face was bleeding profusely.”

After victory at Omloop het Nieuswblad, van Baarle has had nothing but disappointment so far this season including crashing out of the E3 Saxo Classic and being forced to skip the Tour of Flanders through illness. "Then I was quickly in the ambulance and we drove to a crazy hospital in France. I was in the ER without a phone and there was no family, so I couldn't reach anyone."

"I asked the French doctor if I could reach out to some people on his Instagram to let them know I'm okay. The 2.5 hours I lay there lasted so long. The French wanted to stitch up the three cuts on my face, but our team doctor said we could glue it. He took over and glued my face together," the Dutchman continues. "Given the circumstances, I am doing well, but I am quite bruised, scraped and broken. I have a fracture on the outside of my hand and a piece of my shoulder broken. Thursday I have a new scan in the Netherlands. For now I have to do as little as possible and wait it out. That will be fine, because there is not much I can do right now.”