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On the day of the race, Reto and Christine stood waiting in central Zurich, holding their handmade cardboard signs. “Hopp Muriel.” “Go Muriel.” They began to worry when she did not pass them at the end of the course’s first lap. They contacted Swiss Cycling’s team car, but nobody could tell them any news.
Muriel never finished the World Championships. She had crashed, on a descent leading towards Kusnacht, a suburb on the shores of Lake Zurich, with 45km remaining. The area is heavily wooded, and having left the road, she disappeared from view.
It was only after the race ended that a track marshal found Muriel unconscious in the woods.
At one of the world’s biggest cycling races, just a 10-minute drive from her front door, she had been lying alone and injured for about an hour and a half.
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