Three Tour de France favourites were left broken by a mass crash at April’s Itzulia Basque Country. ChrisMarshall-Bellfinds out how they fast-tracked their recovery
It was the crash that had the cycling world holding its breath: Jonas Vingegaard on the floor, motionless; Remco Evenepoel gingerly holding his shoulder as he picked himself up; Primož Roglič cautiously stumbling to his feet and into his team’s car; Jay Vine with spinal injuries; and Belgian Steff Cras believing “I would have been dead if I’d fallen 20cm further away and hit the concrete block”. In an instant, one sweeping downhill right-hand curve at April’s Itzulia Basque Country threatened the seasons of so many riders, and also threw the much-hyped four-way showdown between the sport’s best GC riders at this summer’s Tour de France into serious peril.
The next day it was reported that Vingegaard had suffered a punctured lung among other injuries, Evenepoel was nursing a fractured collarbone and shoulder blade, and a mummified Roglič sported dozens of plasters and patches. It looked as if an unobstructed path had opened up for Tadej Pogačar to win his third maillot jaune. But now, almost three months on, the prognosis has thankfully improved. Pogačar remains favourite for the Tour after his Giro d’Italia domination but Roglič and Evenepoel have successfully returned to action, the former winning two stages and the GC at the Critérium du Dauphiné and the latter winning the same race’s time trial. Reigning Tour champion Vingegaard hasn’t raced since Itzulia, but he is set to head to the Grand Départ off the back of four weeks of training at altitude – as per the original pre-crash plan.
The upshot is that the four-way battle for supremacy is set to commence as planned on 29 June in Florence – a remarkable turnaround in circumstances given the proximity of the Tour to the crash that threatened to upend everything. How have they bounced back so quickly – and indeed, how do elite cyclists fast-track recovery from injuries that seem to us mere mortals to be season-ending, if not worse? First, though, are the aforementioned big four sufficiently healed to duke it out in the titanic three-week tussle we’ve been looking forward to since last autumn?
Superhuman, super access
Aside from the relative youth of professional sportspeople, there is one main difference that separates the recovery times of elite athletes from those of amateurs: access. While you or I might have to spend half a day in A&E waiting for a scan, and several more days awaiting surgery, cyclists at the top of the game are in and out of operation theatres in the time it would take us to book an initial appointment.
“A normal person would wait thre
