This is the Colombian magazine ” Week “Which, this Saturday, had the first of the confidences of Egan Bernal following his dramatic accident. On January 24, while training on his time trial bike in Colombia, the winner of the 2019 Tour de France hit a bus. Under the violence of the impact, the rider fractured his femur, kneecap, two vertebrae and several ribs. At the hospital, the doctors told him that he had “95% chance of becoming a paraplegic”.
For the first time, he recounts the moment: “It was ordinary training with the team, he confides to the magazine. Some were on a normal road bike, me on a time trial bike. After a while some stopped and I wanted to continue on my own. A car escorted me. The position on a time trial bike is very special, you have to be as aerodynamic as possible. Basically, you have to have your head down and your arms close together. Arrived at Gachancipa (site of the accident), I looked ahead and there was nothing. I remember I was going 58 km/h, the wind was favorable, and I started to accelerate. I saw 62 km/h on the speedometer when I hit the bus. »
The shock is then violent: “On the ground, I might not breathe, continues Bernal. I was regarding to pass out when I managed to get some air. I looked up and saw the back of the bus. The mechanic escorting me immediately called the team doctor. He arrived very quickly: thanks to him, I am alive. The femur was broken, it seemed to want to come out of my skin. »
“I lost two and a half liters of blood”
He continues: “After removing the foot from my bike, the doctor stabilized the fracture on the spot. He grabbed me by the waist and two other people, I don’t know if they were doctors or knew anything regarding medicine, but they helped him. They grabbed my foot and pulled it. I begged them to stop but what they did helped me not to lose any more blood. In total, I still lost two and a half liters. »
Egan Bernal continues: “I was desperate, I hurt everywhere, in my leg, neck, back, I was screaming for the doctor to give me something for the pain. I had to stay 15 minutes lying on the road. Around me, people approached, they tried to film me, some tried to prevent them. When the ambulance arrived, I asked for painkillers, but people didn’t have any! I wanted to pass out because I was in so much pain. The pain was excruciating, I had never felt this in my life. 30 or 40 minutes passed between my fall and my arrival at the hospital. »
“I want to return to the highest level, I have faith”
Arrived at the hospital, the prognosis of the doctors is horrible. The life of the runner, hero of everything a little is in danger: “When I woke up following the operation, I understood that it was not only the femur which was broken (he also fractured his kneecap, two vertebrae, eleven ribs and both lungs were punctured). The neurosurgeon told me: You might have died, with such an accident, you had a 95% chance of becoming a paraplegic. He added that he had operated on hundreds of spinal injuries of this magnitude, and that only two had gone well. I was only the second! I did well. The first week following the operation was very hard, all I wanted was to have the tubes removed from my lungs because it hurt so much. Since then, progress has been very rapid. »
So fast that Bernal is already planning on the rest of his career. He wants to come back to the highest level and says it now: “I want to come back to the highest level. I have faith, I think I can do it and I think it will be fast. The doctors get mad when I tell them that. In truth, I don’t know if it will take me a year or ten years, maybe three or six months. Either way, I feel like if I wasn’t on a bike, I wouldn’t know what else to do. »
“It was an accident, period”
“Before the accident, I was doing very well, I had solved my back problems, I was ahead of my preparation. I was confident for my goal of the year, the Tour de France. Will I win it once more? I don’t know, it’s already difficult when everything is going well, so now… ”In a final confession, the winner of the Tour before Tadej Pogacar took power confides that he does not blame anyone. His accident is the result of fate: “The last thing I want to do, he claims, is to blame anyone. I don’t want to blame myself or the bus driver. It was an accident, period. We are not in a football stadium where we can train quietly. When I do 270 km, millions of things can happen, you have to be aware of that. Risks might be avoided, but I can’t stop training on the open road, otherwise I’ll never win the Tour de France once more. »
