The former cyclists tell how they overcame the hard trance, after their heavy accidents. – The Times Hub

Colombia and the world are still pending the evolution of the health of the cyclist Egan Bernal, who is admitted to the Clinic of La Sabana, after the accident he suffered last Monday.

After several days the uncertainty continues, his followers hope that the Tour champion of France in 2019 and current winner of the Giro d'Italia is in good health and overcomes this difficult situation.

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We have no doubt that hard times are coming, that Bernal's battle to get ahead is much more demanding than a full season. The corridor is playing it all, there is no tomorrow. It is known that he lives a complicated present and that the first objective is for the human Egan Bernal to get ahead physically and medically, because the cycling Egan Bernal can wait.

On roasted Monday, around 10:01 in the morning, at km 33 of the Bogot-Tunja road, Bernal was riding his time trial bike and crashed into the back of a bus, which stopped to drop off a passenger. .

He was transferred by ambulance to the Clnica de la Sabana and presented the following injuries: mild head trauma, non-displaced cervical spine fracture, perforation of the lung with the presence of air and bleeding in the thoracic cavity, fracture of the t5 and t6 thoracic vertebrae. and fracture of the femur and the right patella.

As the hours and days passed, Bernal showed improvement, he was gradually awakened and it was confirmed that he had mobility in all four extremities, something that reassured.

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However, the race has not ended for him, until now he is in the prologue, of a complicated test, the most difficult of his 25 years of life.

There have been several cyclists who have had similar or stronger accidents than those of the Cundinamarca cyclist. Some have recovered and have returned to the road, others have not, they have hung up their bicycles.

EL TIEMPO spoke with two of them, the Spaniards Joseba Beloki and Pedro Horrillo, who went to the ground, hit rock bottom, but they recovered and came 'back to life'.

Beloki and Horrillo are a light, a guide in this situation of uncertainty and they tell how they got out of the tunnel, how they overcame that competition that Bernal, the best Colombian cyclist of the moment, has reached.

From the road to the hospital

On July 14, 2003, the ninth stage of the Tour de France was held between Bourg d'Oisans and Gap of 184 km, and the world was able see live the fall of Beloki, who left a curve, was dispatched down the ravine and remained on the asphalt.

He was urgently evacuated. The Eleven team runner was taken to the hospital and there the doctors confirmed a fracture of the head of the femur, the elbow and the wrist of the right arm. He was second in the general, only 40 seconds separated him from the leader, the American, Lance Armstrong, but that remained in history, because the multiple fractures took him out of the option of winning the test, in which he finished second once and two more from third.

These are very difficult moments that one lives. Today I think that in these cases the best thing is to put one in the real situation, Beloki told EL TIEMPO.

And he added: You wake up and what you want is to know when he's going to ride a bike again and that's not it, the first thing is to know if you look good. It is ideal not to create false expectations to put that recovery plan to work, which must go hand in hand with the physical.

Beloki was late coming back. Eight months of hard work and sacrifice passed. They were days of great pain and of becoming aware that he could get ahead.

The key is to have a clear objective. The first is that he has to fight through several mountain stages, flat, others with fans. Want to be a cyclist again? He can do it, he is a young boy, who has a lot ahead of him, but who has to look good, first for his daily life, said the former runner.

For him, the situations are different. He says that he could not be the same as before for several reasons, and that the main one was that the accident was in a race, fighting for the maximum goal of winning the Tour, the best competition in the world, and he could not overcome that.

Egan has a lot going for him, he was close to having injuries that are not even worth talking about, he got away, he's alive and that for him should be the most important thing.

I was risking my race, I lost the chance to fight for the Tour. It was months of hard work to get back and I never recovered well. Egan has a lot going for him, he was close to having injuries that are not even worth talking about, he got away, he is alive and that for him should be the most important thing, said Beloki.

For the podium of the Vuelta a Espaa in 2022 (he was third) there is another fundamental part at the moment: the people around Bernal.

Your environment has to understand it. In this case you have to support it with sincerity, not invent other things. That is important, that his people know how to direct him, it is that one must feel supported by all those who are close, it is the only way that one gets up from those accidents, he concluded.

Daz in a coma

Horrillo had some tough days. He was in a coma for 12 days, following the crash on the eighth stage of the 2009 Giro d'Italia, when he went off the road and into an 80-meter abyss.

They took him out on a stretcher, which was tied to a rope that pulled the helicopter, who took him urgently to a hospital in Bergamo.

The doctors intubated him, because the injuries warranted it: head trauma, multiple fractures of the ribs and vertebrae, of the knee and femur, and a pneumothorax that required drainage after his splintered bones punctured his lungs.

Today, He says that he wants to erase those hard moments, but he can't. He says that he has followed step by step what has happened with Egan Bernal, whom he knows by the way, because he has seen him train in the Basque Country in Spain.

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Horrillo knows what the Colombian cyclist is going through, but based on his experience and what he knows about Bernal, he is optimistic that he will succeed.

Egan's path is hard, difficult, complicated, with a lot of sacrifice, but it is nothing different from what he found in his job, that is cycling, he said.

And he added: You have to change the chip and understand that all the sacrifices he has made are training for the great test that lies ahead. His most difficult moment is now and I am convinced that he will give one hundred percent.

Horrillo did not compete again. He recovered, they almost amputated his leg and the doctors informed him that he was going to be in a wheelchair.

It is that these experiences help one to mature. They tell me that he could not walk again and two months later he was getting me out of the wheelchair. Each organism and injuries, even if they are the same, are different. Egan has several of the ones I had, but if I was able to stand up, he can too, but I want to make it clear that the road is very long, he said.

Horrillo is in favor of Bernal taking things calmly, not despairing. Because, he says, right now he wants to run out and get on his bike and win the Tour again.

You have to lower your threshold of anxiety, because what you want is to be yourself again and you have to control that.

I think it will look good, because the body of a high-performance athlete like his is the instrument of work, it reaches unforeseen limits, because a normal person cannot do it. They were going to amputate my leg, I was in a coma for 12 days, my body was not capable of withstanding an amputation. I had a double pneumothorax, the response of the lungs was dilated, that was serious. In that case it was complicated, but I came out, Egan can do it, said Horrillo.

Currently, he is 47 years old, has ridden two Tour de France, three Giros d'Italia and eight Vueltas a Espaa, and believes that haste is Bernal's worst enemy today.

There is no need to speed up any process, efforts in this type of process are not good advisers. You have to go step by step, you have to balance each step you take. I am optimistic. You cannot be pressured, neither by the media nor personally. You have to calm down and be aware of what you have and how to get out of it. You have to lower your anxiety threshold, because what you want is to be yourself again and you have to control that, the rush is not very good, said Horrillo, who works for one of the sponsors of the race at the Tour.

he agrees with Beloki on the subject of the environment, he warns that it is extremely important that those close to him help him all the time.

You have to have a proper perspective, because the recovery line must be ascending, not descending. You have to live day by day, because sometimes you work intensely and everything can fall apart. He is in the best team in the world, he cannot be better aired, that will help him, as will his family, he specified.

Both pray for the recovery of the Colombian and from Spain they sent him positive messages, those that they received when they were in similar circumstances, in a bed and in the midst of pain and sadness for what happened.

Lisandro RengifoJournalist for EL TIEMPO@lisandroabel

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The former cyclists tell how they overcame the hard trance, after their heavy accidents. - The Times Hub