On September 19 of 2017 a young cyclist of 21 years died on via Las Palmas after his bicycle suffered a failure and he crashed against one of the light posts. This is one of the many accidents bikers have suffered while cycling through this road, and some like this one even caused their death. Even after these accidents passion for this sport keeps cyclists riding through this roads.

Because of Nairo Quintana and Rigoberto Uran, Colombia has started gaining much fame for cyclism. People around the world consider Colombia a very good place to train mountain climbing. Las Palmas which is a road that goes up a mountain, has gotten much fame because it is a challenge for people to climb it and basically everyone has access to it.

In reality many people that have started to gain passion for this sport through time are many times inexperienced and they just start biking without actually knowing the risks they are taking.

Jeremy Gleason is an actual teacher of the Columbus School who is fanatic of the cycling; he climbs Las Palmas almost every day and has lived some experiences that have left him things to reflect about.

“I mean it’s a variety of riders, I mean most riders are recreational riders but some riders are almost professional. Like i’ll be riding up the hill and they pass me as if were riding downhill. I feel like the majority of road bikers are pretty safe, I mean I crashed once and got a slight concussion, but that’s because I was inexperienced and because I got too confident,” mentioned Jeremy Gleason, current 8th grade teacher at TCS.

Everyday you see cyclists going up Las Palmas, and many of them are new to the sport, you can see them many times making mistakes that could cause really serious accident. People who drive cars around them have to be very careful, so they don’t cause serious accidents.

According to Jeremy Gleason, many times it’s not drivers the ones that make the recklessness mistakes that cause the big accidents, it’s the cyclists the ones that many times cause them because they get overconfident. Luis Saldarriaga, a TCS 11th graders, agreed with Gleason´s point. 

“Once I was going up las palmas with my dad, and a bunch of cars, I think they were like 5 of 6 came racing past us, one of them passed just a few inches away from us, I got really scared and told my that that it was a better idea to climb the hill earlier in the morning and not 11 am,” said current TCS Student Luis Saldarriaga.

Vehicles are one of the biggest fears that cyclists face. This is because they are always surrounding them, and they are constantly passing beside with higher velocities. As Luis almost got hit by one of them, there have been many accidents in which car drivers hit cyclists and they get seriously injured.

Las Palmas is a road that although has high traffic at the day, has no stoplights or intersections. This makes it perfect for racing fanatics to try to go up this road as fast as they can and racing with each other. These things cause and even less safe place for cyclists to go around this road.

“I have no words to describe the sensation that you get when you achieve to get to the top of the mountain. It is one of those moments of happiness that you just have no words to describe it, that you are just too excited of what you had just accomplished,” Said Tomas Arrubla.

This really shows how people are passionate for this sport and how much they like practicing it. But it has many risks that cyclists face before they can achieve their goal to getting to the top of the mountain. Even higher risks when in a road like Las Palmas where there is no dedicated space for cyclists and it’s a high velocity road.

“After this moment I started questioning myself if it was a good idea to ride bicycle in places that there was no space for riders to cycle around,” said Arrubla.