In hindsight, Egan Bernal was moving a little gingerly when he walked over to speak to a group of reporters atop Alto Colorado after stage 5 of the Vuelta a San Juan, but it was easy to overlook it at the time. It could just have been the effects of racing hard at 2,600 metres above sea level.
Bernal certainly didn’t betray any concern during his upbeat assessment of his performance on the toughest stage of the race, a significant waypoint on the long journey back from the crash that almost ended his career a year ago. Fourth place on the stage seemed to augur well for the year ahead.
“I think we can be happy and calm about the process,” Bernal smiled beneath his Ineos Grenadiers team’s canopy beyond the finish line.
A day later, the mood music changed abruptly when Bernal abandoned just kilometres into the penultimate stage. Ineos Grenadiers team moved quickly, however, to clarify that the left knee pain that forced him out was not a lingering residue of last year’s horrific crash, but a more minor complaint, caused by a fall on the opening day of the Vuelta a San Juan.
“Egan fell in the same crash as Quinn Simmons on the first stage,” director sportif Xabier Zandio said ahead of Sunday’s final stage.
“He fell, but it wasn’t so bad at the time, it was a pretty light blow to his left knee. For the first day, he had a bit of discomfort, but it didn’t affect him on the bike. On the mountain stage, he felt a bit of discomfort, and he felt it again on yesterday’s stage, so he pulled out as a precaution.”
While there will be considerable relief that Bernal’s pain was not in the same knee he fractured in January of last year, any injury of this kind brings with it a degree of preoccupation.
“It’s never good to have pain in your knee, so that’s always a small worry, but it’s not serious,” Zandio said. “He’s been assessed and it’s not very worrying, so he should be able to recover in a few days.”
Bernal was scheduled to race the Colombian Championships in Bucaramanga next weekend, but it is not yet clear whether he will be passed fit to race.
Zandio stressed that his racing schedule on European roads would not be affected by this setback.
“For him, it’s important to race at home but we’ll see during the week whether he races or not. We’re optimistic,” Zandio said.
“It’s still possible that he rides the National Championships, but that’s not what we’re thinking about, we’re thinking more about…
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