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A picture from better days: Egan Bernal as Giro winner 2021
Photo:
Fabio Ferrari /LaPresse / imago images/LaPresse
The highest difficulties at the Giro d'Italia this year are the ascent to Mount Etna in Sicily, climbing to the Abruzzo summit with the beautiful name Monte Blockhaus and the drive over the Passo Fedaia in the Dolomites.
It will be torture again, a fight with yourself and against the mountain.
it's gonna be tough
Egan Bernal has put up a much tougher fight in recent months.
He can probably only smile mildly at the drudgery of his colleagues over the Dolomite Pass.
He'll be glad he can smile again at all.
The Giro d'Italia 2022 starts on Friday in Hungary's capital Budapest, it is the 105th edition of the Tour of Italy and the defending champion will not be there.
Because Egan Bernal, the superstar from Colombia, winner of the 2019 Tour de France and winner of the 2021 Giro, instead uses all his strength and will to fight his way back to his old life.
A life that almost ended on January 24th.
Days in intensive care
That day, while driving at full speed in his home country, Bernal collided with a bus waiting at a bus stop.
He fractures eleven ribs, two vertebrae including part of a cervical vertebra, a femur, a metacarpal, the thumb and the kneecap.
Both lungs are perforated, the fact that he also knocked out a tooth is hardly worth mentioning in view of the other injuries.
The 25-year-old is in intensive care for days, but it is initially uncertain whether he will survive at all.
It is also said that the chance for him not to be paraplegic is just five percent.
Five percent isn't much.
Five months later, his doctor Gustavo Uriza says Bernal will be able to compete again at the end of May.
You have to be careful with such words, but it's a small miracle: Bernal himself said in February that it was "like a rebirth", now he's been on the home trainer since March.
Fighting, Bernal learned that very early on, he grew up in a slum in Zipaquirá near Bogota, for Bernal things could only go up.
He plans to come to Europe later this month to get back into training, Uriza said at a video conference hosted by the National Academy of Medicine in Bogota.
Even his team Ineos is going too fast.
Team boss Rod Ellingworth called the doctor's announcements "extremely premature".
Even if Bernal comes to Europe, the focus will initially be on rehabilitation, and there is still no talk of preparing for a competition.
Ineos has other top favorites at the start
Ineos can afford to keep the pressure on its flagship athlete low.
Even without Bernal, the British racing team will start the Giro with a top favorite: Richard Carapaz is the first contender this year, the man from Ecuador has also won the Italy loop once.
The two superstars from Slovenia, Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič, are not at the start of the Giro, they are concentrating on the Tour de France in July.
The Tour of France would also come too early for Bernal, but there are already some who are speculating that the Colombian will actually be able to sit on the bike at the scene's third major tour, the Vuelta in Spain, in September.
Former German professional cyclist Jens Voigt, for example, believes that it is important for Bernal to get through a big tour as soon as possible in order to be able to win again next year.
"A seasoned professional and tour winner like Egan doesn't get any better if he starts at Rund um den Kircheturm, Rund um das Kloster or Rund um den Dorfplatz," Voigt told TV channel Eurosport.
Ultimately, the placement doesn't matter, "it's important that he experiences the stress over three weeks and the mental stress of asserting himself in the field".
Memories of Froome's fall
Ineos knows best what consequences such a serious training fall can have: in 2019, Christopher Froome, the four-time tour winner, crashed into a house wall during a route inspection trip to the Criterium de Dauphiné because at the moment he wanted to blow his nose, caught a gust of wind.
Froome fractured his hip, multiple ribs, elbows and femur.
He never returned to his old form after that.
At the time, however, Froome was already 34, almost ten years older than Bernal.
That's still an acceptable age for a professional cyclist, but a comeback at 34 is considerably more difficult than at 25. It's surprising enough that the experts are already thinking about it again.
It's the reincarnation of Egan Bernal.
The Colombian at least announced another training success in April.
During his first attempts on the bike, he did two rides – and was able to keep up with the pace of his training colleague.
That was his mother.