Belgian pro triathlete Sofie Goos was stabbed during a run in Antwerp yesterday and is being treated in the intensive care unit at Stuivenberg Hospital for a kidney injury. BMC-Etixx manager Bob De Wolf has been in contact with her doctors and reports that Goos is recovering and is in good spirits.
According to De Wolf, Goos was finishing up a run when a man attacked her “out of nowhere” and stabbed her in the back. Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reported that a 26-year-old man has been arrested and charged with attempted murder. The article indicated that the attack appears random and that the man suffers from a mental illness.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to Sofie and her family,” De Wolf wrote in an e-mail. “Foremost we hope and pray for a full and speedy recovery. Sofie is an incredibly strong athlete and we strongly believe she will recover from this. It is way too early to provide any analyses on when she will be fit to race again. That is also not relevant at this stage, most important is her recovery process at this moment in time. We wish Sofie and her family all the very best in these difficult times. The BMC-Etixx Team will do all we can to support her along the way.”
[BrakeThrough Media]
Goos posted the following message to her Facebook page shortly after news of the incident broke: “I was stabbed by an unknown man … without reason, cause or motive … stabbed in the lower back and lost a lot of blood.”
Goos was getting ready to race Ironman 70.3 Barcelona next weekend.
