GUERNSEY’S ‘Mr Cycling’ has survived his worst crash of a racing career closing in on half-a-century. Allan Renyard smashed head first through the back window of a stationary car in the Duo Normande race.

His racing bike was split into two, but the veteran racer escaped with cuts which needed stitching and bruises.

‘The four guys in the car behind us thought I’d been killed and were mightily relieved when I clambered out of the back of it,’ said Renyard as he rested at home this week.

Now 64 and ‘old enough to know better’ as he puts it, Renyard needed stitches to a cut above his right eye, his right shinbone, behind his left knee and on his right arm.

‘There’s a lot of bruising, I’m very sore and hobbling around.’

Renyard said he struck the

support car of a rival English pair who he and Mark Batiste had been vying with from the 20k mark.

By all accounts at just past the 40k mark and unbeknown to the Guernsey pair a gendarme had fallen from his motorcycle in avoiding two young children running across the road.

The support car stopped to help just around a corner and foolishly on the racing line.

‘Mark was just ahead of me, missed it and shouted back. But I didn’t see the car in front and slammed into it at 30mph. The bike’s a bit of a mess. It’s in two bits.’

‘In racing terms, it’s got to be the worst accident I’ve had,’ said the rider who has been in brilliant form all season, setting personal bests and breaking age-group records.

He recalls a bad bout of concussion after a spill in 1974 and he broke his hip when cycling, not racing, three years ago.

The Velo Club stalwart is hoping to recover in time to take part on a six-day cycling tour of the Pyrenees at the end of next week.