Four days after British Olympian Marco Loughran and Danish Olympian Jeanette Ottesen were injured in an alleged road rage incident, details regarding the ordeal, which left both swimmers injured, are now being brought to light.
As Loughran described to the press, he was in the passenger seat with Ottesen driving through Copenhagen, Denmark when a man driving a van began honking his horn as a sign he felt Ottesen had pulled off through a green light too slowly. Per Loughran, “He was so close behind us that you didn’t even know what color the van was. He drove up alongside us and looked into the car before skidding in front of us. We had to brake and there was no way we could get out.” (UK Daily Mail)
Loughran went on to explain that the van driver then approached the pair of swimmers and “started screaming for [Ottesen] to get out, taunting her and threatening all sorts”. In response, Loughran got out of the car to try to calm the other driver down when the antagonist gave Loughran “a hammer kick to the chest”, to which Loughran returned a punch in the stranger’s head.
Thinking the incident was over, the couple rolled down their windows to get some fresh air when the man returned, “hailing punches” at Loughran through the window. “I must have felt about seven or eight punches as I was struggling to get my seat belt off. Jeanette was leaning across trying to cradle me and that’s how she was injured”, described Loughran.
Loughran describes the other driver’s rampage as a “cowardly attack.” The British Olympian says he is on the mend, but “Jeanette is so upset about it all.” (BBC Sport) Suffering a broken finger and having another one sprained, Ottesen was advised to take a three-week break from swimming, which certainly comes at the most inopportune time with final training preparations for the 2015 FINA World Championships getting underway. For his part, Loughran suffered cuts to his eyebrow and head, sustained four chipped teeth and suffered damage to his ear and shoulder in the attack.
Fans of the duo received a little comfort in the form of Ottesen’s Twitter account, whose latest tweet indicates “we’re both doing a lot better now.”
I expect this would have been reported to the police .
Putting on my dark Danish tv detective drama hat on , I say this does not add up . You can always tell what colour a van is ,especially if it skidded in front . If the driver was being aggressive at the window then even a partial van registration would surely be noted. Many vans are commercial & have some signage .( I agree these are aggro drivers though) .
The’hammerkick to the chest ‘ .i don’t know what that is but it sounds MMA & not just doable by anyone . I imagine Loughran is quite tall so it says skill & flex to get that… Read more »
Did NO ONE make note of this guy at all???????? How did he get away with no clues as to who he is?????
*through the window, not threw the window