Not again! Egan Bernal has bad crash after great start to season

Cycling is a sport of highs and lows. Just a week ago,after nearly four years without a victory, Egan Bernal of Ineos Grenadiers took two national titles at the Colombian championships.

But on Monday, he had a brutal crash at the Clásica Jaén Paraíso and went to hospital. The initial prognosis sounds like a broken collarbone, according to reports in AS.

Bernal, winner of the 2019 Tour de France and 2021 Giro d’Italia, saw his career nearly end in 2022 after a terrible collision. While training in Colombia, he hit a parked bus at around 50 km/h while riding his TT bike. The impact left him with over 20 fractures, including breaks in his vertebrae, right femur, and patella, along with chest trauma, a punctured lung, and broken ribs.

His injuries weren’t just career-threatening—they were life-threatening. Doctors estimated a 90 per cent chance he wouldn’t survive. If he did, paralysis seemed inevitable.

But thankfully, Bernal defied the odds. After a whole lot of rehab, he returned to outdoor riding, calling it the happiest day of his life. By the end of 2022, he was back in competition at the Tour of Denmark, though still not at his former fitness.

In 2023, signs of progress began to show. He finished 8th overall at the Tour de Romandie and completed the Vuelta a España in 55th. By 2024, his resurgence continued—7th at Paris-Nice, second in the KOM classification at the Tour de Suisse, and 29th at the Tour de France.

He won the Colombian national time trial title in Bucaramanga, covering 43.2 km in 50:51, edging out Walter Vargas (Team Medellín-EPM) by seven seconds. Then, on Sunday, he delivered another emphatic performance, dominating the 237.0-km road race and dropping the field, finishing more than two minutes ahead of Diego Camargo (Team Medellín-EPM).

On Monday, proudly wearing the Colombian national championship jersey, he went down–on the same day that his Polish teammate Michal Kwiatkowski took the win–his first in almost two years.

Cycling is a sport of highs and lows–and hopefully the Colombian will be back soon and continue his incredible comeback.