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Crashing is inherently related to the sport of cycling. Sometimes it results in serious injuries, but fortunately in most cases the riders continue their race. However, every crash has consequences. These consequences are both physical and mental. The physical part is about the body being sore and taking up energy to recover. Also, road rash and bruises can affect sleeping and therefore a lack of much needed rest. But also the mental part should not be underestimated. Confidence is essential, specially when negotiating turns of riding a tricky final. Having crashed can cause a rider to brake early and lose position. There we asked ourselves the following question. How does a crash affect the results obtained in the days after a crash? <div><br>To answer this question we took the following approach. In our PCS Live Stats feed we keep track of crashes and the riders involved. Note that we don't see all crashes and therefore we don't have all crashes recorded, but for this analysis that is no problem. We took every recorded crash of riders since 2021 and looked at the average results before the crash and the average results after the crash. Note that we took the Nth result before and after a crash, so the first result after a crash could also be a week later. However, we only considered results 30 days before and 30 days after the crash to focus on the period surrounding the crash. The result on the day of the crash we left out of the analysis. Also, DNF results are also left out of the analysis as there is no good substitute value. We programmed this conditions into our database and the following chart rolled out.  

Figure 1. The crash effect. How does a crash affect the results obtained after a crash?

Bars indicate the average result position before and average the day of a crash.After analysing 947 crashes since January 1st 2021, we see a significant effect before and after a crash. Before a crash a rider finished on average around the 59th position. In the first result after a crash, a rider finishes on average 68th. In the results following the average result steadily goes back to the before crash average, but it takes time. The body needs to recover and confidence needs to come back.