Young Belgian pro cyclist Leander Van Hautegem was the subject of a miracle rescue on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old was discovered in a ditch by a passing forest ranger after he crashed heavily in training and suffered \u201csevere concussion,\u201d a collapsed lung, and broken ribs.<\/p>\n
According to local media outlets, the Flanders-Baloise racer was training in the Koppenberg forest on his gravel bike when things went wrong.<\/p>\n
Sporza<\/em> reports that Van Hautegem crashed and was left undiscovered \u201cfor a long time\u201d before a ranger discovered the rogue rider battered and busted in a ditch.<\/p>\n He was evacuated from the scene by a fire brigade and taken to hospital in nearby Gent, where he stayed overnight for observation.<\/p>\n Flanders-Baloise confirmed the news Tuesday afternoon and revealed the extent of Van Hautegem\u2019s injuries.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a heavy fall in training, Leander Van Hautegem was taken to UZ Gent. The unfortunate Kluisbergen resident suffered a severe concussion, a collapsed lung, and two cracked ribs. Get well soon, Leander!\u201d<\/p>\n It was a lucky end to a very unlucky ride for Van Hautegem, who had finished Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne in the last group on the road only two days earlier.<\/p>\n Van Hautegem later wrote \u201cI\u2019m OK\u201d on his Instagram stories.<\/p>\n Surprisingly enough, he\u2019s not yet uploaded his disastrous ride to Strava.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/news\/miracle-rescue-for-belgian-pro-cyclist\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1-1.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated March 4, 2026 01:11AM Young Belgian pro cyclist Leander Van Hautegem was the subject of a miracle rescue on Tuesday. The 22-year-old was discovered in a ditch by a passing forest ranger after he crashed heavily in training and suffered \u201csevere concussion,\u201d a collapsed lung, and broken ribs. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1806378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1806378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1806378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1806378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1806378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}