CYCLING. Clément Braz-Afonso: “I don’t remember anything but I was very lucky!”

Clément Braz-Afonso is not complaining. Aware of having avoided a much worse fate, he prefers to think about what comes next. “I was scheduled for Mayenne and Mercantour, now I have nothing until the French championship…” More than a month without racing but the main thing is elsewhere. Tuesday, during a training outing at the entrance to Biot in the Alpes-Maritimes, he hit a car, bounced off the windshield before landing seven or eight meters further on and being evacuated on Antibes hospital. “I don’t remember anything,” he explains, but I know that I was very lucky, we now have to see the evolution of the concussion but I have no other injury and during the examinations, they did not detect anything problematic…” The accident was filmed by a surveillance video recovered by the gendarmerie and the young Lotois was able to reconstruct the scene. “It was downhill in the village, the guy cut too early to turn into a small parking lot, he was in my lane, I couldn’t do anything. The helmet is badly damaged on the back, with other cracks, I’m happy to get away with it…”

Arrested until June 6

Turning professional this winter at CIC-U-Nantes Atlantique, the rider from Bretenoux-Biars, on the podium at the Ronde de l’Isard three years ago, made a remarkable debut at the highest level. Very present at the start of the season, never far from the Top 10, attacking in the climb of the Sine during the second stage of the Alpes Maritimes at the entrance to Vence (13^e overall 10” from Cosnefroy…), 9^e of Route Adélie, 8^e of the Tour du Doubs, he showed from the outset, at 24 years old, that he was in the game. Arrested until June 6, he will regret even more the cancellation of the Route d’Occitanie, yet another collateral damage of the Paris Olympic Games! See you, if all goes well, in Saint-Martin-de-Landelles in less than a month.