Wow! My heart sank when I read that headline. I really hope he is ok.
Damn, I hope he comes out ok and close to back to normal after recovery. I had just listened to him on the Zwift Power Up cycling podcast yesterday afternoon
We were looking at that photo last night. That was serious impact, especially a human body.
This went from “dang, doing the TdF is gonna be almost impossible after breaking a leg” to “is he going to live” real fast.
Sad to say, but imo there’s no road back from something this catastrophic to winning pro bike races.
I’d love to be proved wrong, tho
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First and foremost I hope he makes a full recovery and will have a high quality of life after this. I think bike racing will be an after thought however.
One of the tragic things about this to me is that this could have likely been avoided. Those roads are notorious for being dangerous. I saw this headline from last week and can’t help but think this was the universe telling these guys to maybe pack it up and move their camp. There are plenty of cycling meccas to spend the winter - I think riders will think carefully about what situations they put themselves in moving forward.
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Wishing Egan all the best on what appears to be a long road to recovery. I don’t know if he’ll be able to race ever again by the sounds of those injuries. It’s such a shame, I was looking forward to his showdown with the Slovenians later this year, but all that is secondary to his recovery and quality of life.
I can see why retired pros like Phil talk about risking their life by training and racing as a pro. It’s certainly a consideration these riders have to make when choosing whether or not to continue in their careers. It’s easy to forget we participate in a dangerous sport.
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Hmmmm….seems to be it is a situational awareness issue (at least as far as Bernal is concerned).
Pick the right bike for the route and ride smart. Reports are that Bernal had his head down and did not hear the screaming of his teammates as they tried to warn him.
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situational awareness is conditioned, at least partially, by the position on the bike, that’s what Pidcock is suggesting. Bernal’s crash seems to jibe with his hypothesis.
I’ve been saying this for some time. In the past, a time trial bike was a distinct advantage. But now that everyone has them, the advantage has diminished to almost zero. Also, more races are doing TTs that have some climbing in them so racers are switching bike mid-race.
It doesn’t seem to me that racing and training on a bike where you have to make a pretty significant position change to reach the brakes is a great idea. Maybe it’s time to go back to Merckx-style TTs.
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We introduced an “Eddy” class to all of our time trials 5 or 6 years ago. The idea was to get more people time trialing without needing to go all in on a TT bike and and gear just to optimize an aero position.
Its been very successful in both attracting riders who wanted to try racing without all the TT bike effort, and also as a place for experienced folks to just enter a race on their normal bike and scratch the competitive itch.
We also have a few race courses where TT bikes would be dangerous. For those courses we require road bikes instead of TT bikes.
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And in that situation, Bernal should not have been in his aerobars (which seems to be the case). He should have been on the base bar with his head up and paying attention.
When your teammates are literally screaming at you to warn you of an imminent danger and you plow into that danger regardless, it isn’t the bike’s fault.
Nobody is arguing this, it’s never this simple. Let me help you: one way to prove their hypothesis is to compare the number of major incidents between TT bikes vs Regular bikes, normalized by time in the bike.
We can speculate what the rider should have done or not in a case by case basis all day…but the true interesting question behind Pidcock’s comments is: are TT bikes systematically more dangerous?.
I haven’t look at the data, my hunch is yes, specially in normal roads training.
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No help necessary, thanks…I understand the situation perfectly.
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Bernal to have a second spinal surgery…
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For what Ineos initially reported as a minor accident, it has got worse every time I’ve looked 
Is this the worst event ** in recent cycling history?…Heartbreaking. 
** By worst I meant, the combination of: Youth of athlete, Grand Tour Champion, Top 3 in the world, during his prime, severity of injury.
Some ppl would say Froome, but by the time of the accident he was relatively old and his best performances in the rear mirror.
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Van Aert’s crash in the TT was pretty scary, too, iirc. His recovery from that was impressive. Admittedly not a GC rider though.
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Bernal discharged from hospital…incredibly good news!
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