{"id":577212,"date":"2026-03-31T22:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T22:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577212\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T22:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T22:37:11","slug":"muriel-furrer-death-investigation-finds-cyclist-not-found-for-over-80-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577212\/","title":{"rendered":"Muriel Furrer death; Investigation finds cyclist not found for over 80 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

An investigation has found a cyclist who was killed during the road world championships in 2024<\/a> was not found for more than 80 minutes after the crash.<\/p>\n

Muriel Furrer, 18, of Switzerland, suffered a fatal head injury after crashing during the junior road race in Zurich.<\/p>\n

The Zurich Public Prosecutors’ Office opened a probe into her death and found Furrer crashed into a wooded area after leaving the road in wet conditions, on a course close to where she grew up.<\/p>\n

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The incident was not seen by race officials and Furrer lay untreated for more than an hour.<\/p>\n

Race marshals eventually found her on the 73.5km course and had her airlifted to hospital but she died of a head injury.<\/p>\n

“The accident occurred at approximately 11:04am, out of sight of support vehicles, race officials, spectators, and marshals,” the prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The screen shows cyclist Muriel Furrer, who sadly passed away after suffering a severe head injury at the UCI Paracycling and Road World Championships\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

“The injured cyclist lay hidden in the undergrowth and was not visible from the road.<\/p>\n

“The sudden disappearance of [the] athlete was not automatically reported. Due to these circumstances, the injured cyclist was not discovered until 12:26pm.”<\/p>\n

Despite live tracking of riders and radio being used in other races, including the Tour De France, neither was allowed in the world championships.<\/p>\n

World governing body the UCI oversaw the race along with a local organising committee.<\/p>\n

The cyclist’s union said tracking of riders should have been introduced years ago.<\/p>\n

“It’s such an easy solution,” CPA president Adam Hansen told BBC Sport in October.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Furrer competing in 2022.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

The public prosecutors said: “According to the investigation, the first emergency responders arrived at the scene of the accident just minutes after the cyclist was found and immediately began providing initial medical care.<\/p>\n

“This was followed by the rescue of the seriously injured cyclist from the undergrowth and preparations for her transport to the hospital.<\/p>\n

“No evidence of any criminally relevant breaches of duty was found, either in connection with the time-consuming rescue operation or with the subsequent medical care at the University Hospital Zurich.”<\/p>\n

Furrer’s race number on the day, 84, was retired from women’s junior road races last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An investigation has found a cyclist who was killed during the road world championships in 2024 was not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-577212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}