Colombian cyclist Egan Bernal, 25, announced that he has returned to cycling, in another step in his recovery from a serious accident he suffered at the end of January.
“Guess who’s back on his bike and feeling great,” Bernal wrote on his Twitter profile, accompanied by a photo of him riding a training bike and wearing the uniform of his team, the British Ineos Grenadier.
On January 24, Bernal collided at 62 km/h with a bus stopped outside Bogotá, while training with his team.
He suffered 18 spinal, leg and hand injuries, as well as puncture wounds to his lungs, and underwent five surgeries. After two weeks of hospitalization, including ten days in an intensive care unit, he was discharged on February 6, when he began to recover to return to competition.
“My life changed in one second. One minute I was getting ready for the Tour de France, the next I was fighting for my life,” said the cyclist as he left the hospital. “I had a 95% chance of being paraplegic and nearly lost my life,” he wrote while still in the ICU.
Bernal has been posting steps to speedy recovery on his social media, where he posted photos and videos of himself slowly returning to walking, riding a stationary bike and playing with a soccer ball.
“I want to get back to my best version, I have faith, I don’t know why, but I believe that I can recover, and that it will be fast,” said the cyclist in a recent interview. There is, however, no forecast for him to compete again.
The Colombian was the first Latin American cyclist to win the Tour de France, the most traditional road cycling circuit in the world, at the age of 22, in 2019. The event has existed for 109 years.
He also won the Giro d’Italia in 2021, and only the Vuelta a España remains for him to become champion of the trio of more traditional road cycling events.
Colombia had already won the Giro in 2014 and the Vuelta in 2016, with Nairo Quintana, but never a Tour de France before Bernal’s victory.
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