Movistar confirms Colombian is slowly improving after Tour de Suisse crash
Juan Mauricio Soler (Movistar Team) wins stage 2 at the Tour de Suisse (Image credit: Sirotti)
The Movistar team has announced that Mauricio Soler’s condition is no-longer life threatening, revealing that tests seem to rule out any spinal injuries.
Soler was lying in second overall when he crashed during stage six of the Tour de Suisse. He hit a curb and flew into a fence, striking a spectator. Soler won stage two of the Tour de Suisse and dedicated his victory to teammate Xavier Tondo, who died in a domestic accident in May.
He was taken to hospital by helicopter and diagnosed with a severe head trauma and cerebral edema plus multiple fractures and bruising. He was placed in an induced coma in an intensive care unit of the St. Gallen hospital in Switzerland.
"It can be said that he’s no longer in a life-threatening situation,” the Movistar team doctor Alfredo Zúñiga said in a statement.
“He has begun to make slight movements and tests seem to rule out spinal injury, although this depends on further tests. Now we have to see the evolution of possible neurological damage, a process which needs time. The cerebral edema is subsiding, the intracranial pressure is declining.
“Mauricio is still in the intensive care unit and he will stay there for several days.”
The Spanish team confirmed that Soler’s wife Patricia and his brother are both with him in Switzerland after travelling from Colombia.
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Stephen is the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.
