Tour of Utah: Rally Cycling van and trailer damaged in rock slide

Rally Cycling mechanic Erik Maresjo has spent a lot of time behind the wheel of the team van, driving the Pro Continental team's gear from one race to another, but his trip from Golden, Colorado, to Cedar City, Utah for the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah last week will be one to remember after a rock slide on Interstate 70 about two hours east of his destination stopped him in his tracks and damaged both the van and trailer.

Maresjo suffered only a minor burn on his forearm when the airbags deployed, but he was otherwise uninjured. The van was obviously not so lucky.

"I was just driving along minding my own business at 10:30 at night and saw a good little dust cloud just at about a 45-degree angle from the van and thought, 'Well, that's weird'," Maresjo told Cyclingnews.

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"Then there was a dust cloud that the van was in, and the van kind of stopped abruptly, the airbags went off and I was like, 'Wow, that's interesting.' I was still in the dust cloud and I kind of opened the door and looked at the front and saw there was a big boulder kind of sticking out a little bit and there were some other rocks in the other lane."

Maresjo remained in his vehicle but checked for damage.

"The front end was pushed all the way in," he said. "I probably hit it about 45 or 50 mph; I wasn't really paying attention the speedometer as I was slowing down. The front A-arm got ripped off. There were smaller rocks that hit the trailer and ripped off the awning. It broke a wheel on the left side, so there was something that probably skidded through.

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com