The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Egan Bernal recovers in the ICU from several surgical operations after his accident

2022-01-25T20:21:49.743Z


The great Colombian cyclist suffered fractures in one leg and a vertebral dislocation in the chest that compressed the spinal cord


King of the Dolomites and his snow, which frightens strong hearts;

emperor of the Iseran, and the storm of him, the colossus of the Alps;

Tour winner at 22, the youngest yellow jersey in Paris in a century;

winner of the Giro d'Italia at 24;

just 10 days after turning 25, Egan Bernal accelerates on his goat with his eyes on the ground, in the most aerodynamic position possible, a hard and sacrificed training, and reaches 65 kilometers per hour on a road open to traffic, not far from his home in Zipaquirá, in the heart of Cundinamarca, north of Bogotá.

When he looks up, before his eyes, a huge red line car is stopped.

He brakes and is thrown and it is his chest that hits the back of the bus, which is dented, and his body, his legs, his rib cage, is fractured,

His partner from Almuñécar, Carlos Rodríguez, who trained with him, holds his black goat, intact, while Egan writhes on the ground and is attended by an Ineos masseur.

Half a dozen team runners have been concentrated for 15 days in a hotel in neighboring Tocancipá, next to the autodrome from which the pilot Juan Pablo Montoya left.

Work at altitude, more than 2,200 meters, which improves the ability to transport oxygen in the blood, is mandatory in these times of cycling.

One day after the accident, and after several hours in the operating room, first in the hands of traumatologists, who repaired his leg, the femur (a pinning with a nail and plate, and its screws) and the complex anatomical reduction of the crushed knee (“comminuted ”, says the medical report, fragmented into multiple pieces), and later the neurologists who reduce the thoracic injury, the dislocation of the vertebrae, the disc herniation, the spinal cord compression, Egan Bernal remains in the ICU of the University of La Sabana, a private establishment of Opus Dei in nearby Chía, just the center where the cyclist studied journalism. A chest tube relieves pneumothorax, the perforation of a lung by a broken rib. “We are in phase one, the first 24-48 hours, the

damage control

, in which the main thing is to save the life of the injured person, ”reports the hospital spokesman.

“He will be in the ICU for about 72 hours.

We hope to be able to wake him up little by little so that, with all the volumes of liquid that he has needed, he can gradually recover.

In the next few days we will deal with the risk of infection and the pulmonary contusion that he had.”

The world of cycling holds its breath and waits, and there is no one who does not fear that the crash in Gachancipá, the highway from Bogotá to Tunja, does not mean the end of the career of the best cyclist of recent years together with the Slovenian phenomenon Tadej Pogacar.

Nobody talks about recovery times, about a possible return to the bicycle of the champion, so young.

“These are important injuries,” says traumatologist Luis González Lago, an expert in repairing cyclist injuries and fractures.

“The prognosis in general is not very good for a professional cyclist, as long as the knee injury is going to take time, comminuted and open it will be very annoying, and we will see how that joint is left for repeated flexion in pedaling, and there is also to see how the neurological injury evolves, if they have managed to eliminate the spinal cord compression or the fragment that caused it or if it has not been important.

We have to see, we have to see, how much time has passed, if the spinal cord compression has caused a permanent injury or not, or that injury can be recovered, which is probably the case because they have already said that rehabilitation has begun.

Neurological evolution can only be seen over time.”

Attentive cycling observers speak of two types of riders, those who ride loose and cool, like the mythologized Anquetil or the Pogacar who never hurts himself when he falls, and doesn't fall very often, and those who ride stiff, like tied to the bicycle, like Poulidor, always bleeding, or like van Primoz Roglic or Mikel Landa, or like Egan Bernal, who always break something, and remember the Colombian cyclist's first big hit, summer of 18, San Sebastián classic . Bernal fell face-first onto the asphalt, breaking his jaw and suffering a concussion and head trauma. He recovered quickly and well, and 10 months later he won the Tour; and after retiring from the following Tour, the 2020 one, with his back in dust, he recovered and won the Giro seven months later.

who suffered fractures similar to those of the Briton when he fell in front of Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour when he was speeding down the descent from La Rochette to Gap in pursuit of Alexander Vinokúrov.

Or, even more painful, the memory of Mauricio Soler, of Ramiriquí, the great Colombian cyclist, king of the mountain in the 2007 Tour, who had to retire as a result of a very serious fall in the 2011 Tour of Switzerland, in which he suffered a serious head injury.

"And Beloki's injuries were apparently less serious than Bernal's," says Pedro Celaya, a doctor at ONCE in Beloki in 2003, who recalls how Eddy Merckx recovered from a terrible fall in 1969 that destroyed his hip, although he passed later his entire career as an uncomfortable cannibal on the bike, constantly changing his posture, and the height of the saddle, and always with an Allen key in his pocket to modify it and a nervous mechanic. “But each cyclist is a world, and his body. There are examples in all senses. When he returns to the bicycle he will have to modify his posture on the bike and the pedaling mechanics, and, above all, return with patience, without anxiety, without wanting to burn deadlines or stages so as not to enter into chronic fatigue.

Egan, the champion of all time, is awaiting his Ineos, the British team with which he renewed for five more years just a month ago, until December 2026, and, above all, the fans, who have always loved runners with character, await him. and talent.

And they are not that many.

You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES on

Facebook

and

Twitter

, or sign up here to receive

our weekly newsletter

.

Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-01-25

You may like

Sports 2024-02-12T08:15:20.523Z

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.