CRANKTASTIC

Some team officials said Weylandt could have been traveling as fast as 50 miles per hour. Jonathan Vaughters, team manager of the Garmin-Cervélo squad, likened the crash to jumping out of a car at that speed wearing only your underwear.

“Quite frankly, on the level of athletes putting their safety on the line for a sport, the American macho sports like football and other typical ‘guy sports’ are a joke,” Vaughters said in a telephone interview. “The perception is that bicycle racing is cute and fun and, ‘look at all the pretty colored jerseys going down that mountain pass,’ but it’s an unbelievably brutal and dangerous sport with no margin for error.”