THERE was a moment of high drama for Commonwealth Games cyclist Sam Firby yesterday after his £6,000 bicycle ended up being crushed by a lorry on the motorway hours before he was due to race.

After finishing a practice session around the St Kilda time-trial route, the state-of-the-art machine broke free from a roof rack on the motorway and flew underneath a trailing lorry.

But after making some calls, cycling team manager Tony Aubert and Jersey team manager Paul Huddlestone managed to borrow a bike from a local stockist and a rear plate wheel from the Australian team.

Sam was able to put the incident behind him and take part in today’s race.

Wearing a black armband in memory of team manager Tony Richomme, who died suddenly last month following a stroke, he finished in 27th place out of a field of 62, with a time of 56 min 15.10 sec, 7 min 37.81 sec behind Australian gold medalist Nathan O’Neill.

‘I just couldn’t believe it,’ said Tony.

‘We had just had a good practice session and we were literally pulling off the motorway back to the village when we heard this crack, and when we looked out of the rear window we saw Sam’s bike heading underneath a lorry.

‘The lad was devastated because it was his bike and it’s a very expensive piece of kit.

We managed to pull the various bits out from under the truck and we knew straight away that there was no saving it.’ After his race, Sam said: ‘I was speechless when it happened – I couldn’t believe it and was just wondering how many more things could go wrong for me.

‘But Toby and Paul did brilliantly in finding me a new bike and wheel, and with a few adjustments, it was good enough for me to race on.

‘My race wasn’t my best, though, and I would have liked to have gone a bit quicker, really.

It was a hard course and although the weather was clear, there was a pretty strong headwind, which made it tough going before the turn point.’ The road race, which is Sam’s strongest event of the two, is the final event of the Games on Sunday.