Ride London 100

It's annoyed me that every news article has focused on the incidents rather than the event and money raised for charity. You never get this with the marathon, but I'm sure there are lots of relatively minor medical issues and unfortunately deaths every couple of years. These are always reported as a side issue though, and don't detract from the general coverage. For the 100, every news outlet was desperate to tell you about the medical support, or the 'traffic chaos'. Always hints at the general cyclist outgroup mentality of the media/public.

If you took 26,000 people and made them sit still in a field for 8 hours does the law of averages say that some will require medical attention before the day is out?

This is my reading of it too. There are always a few deaths from natural causes at Glastonbury each year, admittedly there are more people but they are all essentially just sitting in a field.

The crashes I find a little more worrying. There seem to be 2 events running concurrently, there is the "smash it round chasing a pb" ride and the "I never dreamed I'd be able to do something like this" ride, and the two don't mix very well. Currently the organisers rely on entrants telling them which they are by giving an expected time and use that to place them in the appropriate start wave. It seems to me that the start waves around 7 - 7.30 have too great a mix, which puts wobbly riders fighting tired limbs and inexperienced chain-gangs on the same bit of road.

the law of averages say that some will require medical attention

They should ban the law of averages if it's making so many people ill