The season is only a few weeks old, but team doctors have been busier than usual. From Australia to Spain and the Middle East, riders have been hitting the deck with worrying regularity. Broken bones, nasty injuries and bad luck have turned what should be an early-season build-up into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
Not the best way to start the season
Lidl-Trek had a major season eff-up when Mads Pedersen crashed on the opening day of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. His Classics campaign is up in the air–although one of his former teammates thinks he will be OK. Giulio Ciccone didn’t crash, but fell ill–which meant we got to see our national champion, Derek Gee-West, race his first race with the team at the UAE Tour.
His teammate Edward Theuns isn’t quite sure what is going on. The speeds may be higher, he said to Sporza, when you fall badly the damage is often severe. Crashes have always been part of the sport, but it certainly seems that once again, there’s been quite a few early on. It was only a few years ago when a bunch of the big names had their seasons totally derailed after multiple crashes in the spring. Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, to name a few, had a very unlucky start to 2024.
Injuries, crashes, oh my
Other squads are dealing with setbacks at the same time. Decathlon–AG2R La Mondiale Team also has a few riders on the DL. Tiesj Benoot is sidelined with a back problem, Olav Kooij has been laid low by illness, and Robbe Ghys recently joined the list with a broken collarbone.
Then there is Fabio Jakobsen, who has definitely had a few bad crashes in his career. But the other day, it was a doozy. “It’s the biggest abrasion I’ve ever had. “It was a long slide on the highway yesterday,” he said to Sporza. “I apparently drove on a stone, after which my tire and rim burst. I moved to my right side. My back and hip: everything is open.”
A list of crashes
And those are just a handful of cases. There were a bunch of weird ones in Australia. Mikkel Bjerg broke bones in his hand after an extraordinary collision with a kangaroo at the Tour Down Under. Race leader Jay Vine also went down, but thankfully was able to finish. (But some sad news followed the poor ‘roo.) Jhonatan Narváez fractured vertebrae in the same race. Marius Mayrhofer left Australia with multiple fractures, while Damien Touzé suffered serious internal injuries in Oman. Across the peloton, riders from teams…
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