Jonas Vingegaard remains in the Txagorritxu Hospital in Vitoria after the spectacular fall he suffered in the fourth stage of the Tour of the Basque Country last week. The Danish Visma cyclist, champion of the last two Tours de France, suffered a fractured collarbone and several broken ribs, in addition to having a collapsed lung and a pulmonary contusion.
Due to pneumothorax (which occurs when air leaks into the space between the lungs and the chest wall), Vingegaard underwent surgery this Monday, according to the newspaper AS. Later he was admitted to the ICU, as required by protocols in these cases. In the days before the intervention he had been in the plant.
Since the crash in Itzulia “he is suffering a lot”, as team director Frans Maassen acknowledged during the last few days in the Basque Country. Nobody in Visma| Lease a Bike dares to predict whether Vingegaard will be able to defend the title at the Grande Boucle and, if so, under what conditions he will do so.
The lack of adequate preparation would clear the way for Tadej Pogacar, the great favorite to regain the throne in Paris in the fight with the Dane to break the tie between both of them in the most emblematic cycling race. “At the moment, Jonas is not thinking about whether he will make it to the Tour or not,” Merijn Zeeman, Visma’s head of sports, said in Paris-Roubaix.
Another of the great cyclists who underwent surgery last weekend for that same multiple fall was Remco Evenepoel. The Belgian Soudal Quick Step cyclist underwent successful surgery for a broken collarbone. Evenepoel was operated on by Dr. Steven Claes, an operation that went “without complications”, so the Belgian champion, winner of four races this season, was discharged to recover, his team reported.
At the moment, his team has not specified the recovery time of the winner of the 2022 Vuelta, but it is expected that he can be at the start of the Tour de France at the end of June in Florence (Italy).
For his part, Primoz Roglic, another of the victims of the Itzulia and who also had to abandon, showed through social networks the injuries caused by the fall on that fateful curve during the descent from Olaeta and also in the previous stage. . “Memories of stages 3 and 4 in Itzulia… feeling a little better!” He indicated at the same time that he asked the rest of those punished by the fall for a speedy recovery.
