“I avoided the worst“Says François Pervis. The Mayennais, seven-time world cycling champion, had a serious accident on the night of Friday to Saturday in the United States while trying to break the world speed record in a recumbent bike. Her tire burst, causing her to fall.”I was scared because the fall was endless“, he adds. He was traveling at 130 km / h and rolled over in his recumbent bike.
“I saw daylight and thought I was gonna get kicked out“, he recalls. He finally finished his race in the sand 400 meters further and did miraculously well.”I was stunned, my lungs and neck hurt.“The Mayenne has the first vertebra depressed and a punctured lung. “The surgeon said that if the first vertebra had sunk more, it was tetraplegia. You have to realize how lucky I was in this little misfortune because it’s still a little misfortune.”
End of the adventure
The champion is forced to stop his record attempt and will be able to return to France. “It’s years of work, the students of the IUT of Annecy (Haute-Savoie) took turns for 10 years to design the bike, it’s 100,000 euros.”
François Pervis can still congratulate himself on having broken a “little record” as he says: he managed to drive at 112.47 km/h for a short distance (4 km) at the beginning of the week. “It’s already takenhe confides. Even if I wanted to drive at 145, 150 km/h, to have the ultimate world record. So it’s infuriating, it’s really infuriating.”