{"id":454817,"date":"2026-03-03T05:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454817\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T05:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:52:18","slug":"irish-champ-townsend-fractures-shinbone-in-race-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454817\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish champ Townsend fractures shinbone in race crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\/Irish road race champion has suffered a major blow after crashing at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and fracturing his leg, which will result in missing many of his favoured spring races<\/p>\n

Rory Townsend, the Irish men\u2019s road race champion who has just started his two-year contract with Unibet Rose Rockets, now faces a period on the sidelines after crashing at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and fracturing his leg.<\/p>\n

He came down in spectacular, and painful, circumstances on Sunday in the Belgian one-day race, won by Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike). Medical checks diagnosed a fractured tibia, or shin bone.<\/p>\n

Just how long he will be out of action for is unknown. However, the injury is a major setback as he has become a specialist in the breakaways in one-day races, winning ADAC Cyclassics (1.UWT) last year from such a move.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Gillespie's<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Ireland's<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Townsend (30) took to social media to confirm the news, saying he had gone “over the bars and into recovery mode”.<\/p>\n

He does, at least, have the comfort of knowing this has happened so early in the season he will have plenty of time to come back for lots of racing in the months ahead.<\/p>\n

“Yesterday at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne my race ended after around 60km. I went over the bars and landed straight on my knee. Unfortunately, scans showed a fractured tibia,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Not the update I wanted to share, and it means I\u2019ll be out for a while. Pretty frustrating, but the focus now is recovery and coming back stronger.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig thanks to everyone who helped me on the spot, and special mention to my personal nurse, Marcel Kittel\u2026 even taking my pants off after the crash. I\u2019ll be back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish road race champion has suffered a major blow after crashing at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and fracturing his leg, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-454817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}