Jay Vine could still feel effects of kangaroo crash for up to a year: what exactly is going on?

Officially, Vine’s injury list states a broken scaphoid, and the Australian is of course no stranger to bad luck with injuries. Think of the elbow problem he suffered after his crash in the Vuelta a España in 2023, or the back brace he had to wear for a long period after fracturing a vertebra in the Tour of the Basque Country in 2024.

The crash at the Tour Down Under looked far less severe, although the kangaroos running through the peloton became major news. Vine somehow still managed to finish the race and in doing so secured the overall title. Speaking in Catalunya via Sporza, he said it would be nice if the sport were remembered for something other than a kangaroo jumping in front of the riders.

A broken scaphoid is a fracture of one of the small carpal bones in the wrist, on the thumb side. Vine required surgery, and during his spell off the bike he kept busy with a house move in Andorra. By the end of February, he was already giving an update from the rollers.

At the time, he wrote that the wrist was responding well and that he was allowed back outdoors again, although that still came with highly changeable weather in Andorra. An unexpectedly long stretch of family time finally came to an end this month with his return in Catalunya. After stage 1, he wrote about the wrist that there is still plenty of progress to be made in terms of pain management, but that he has already come a long way.

So although the crash looked less serious than some of the setbacks he has endured in the past, Vine is definitely still dealing with the consequences. From Catalunya, the Australian spoke of a rehabilitation process that could take “nine to 12 months”. A personal result in the Spanish stage race is therefore out of the question, though Vine is more than willing to work for team leaders João Almeida and Brandon McNulty.

When will we see Vine back at his absolute best? At first, nine to 12 months sounded almost like a slip of the tongue, but follow-up enquiries by IDLProCycling.com with UAE Emirates-XRG suggest it may indeed take a while. The team explained that this is the full recovery window and that it is a long one. It was described as a fairly complicated fracture, meaning Vine is able to race, but he is still dealing with pain and discomfort that will simply need time to settle.

That also means it is too early to talk seriously about personal ambitions. Those ambitions are there on the horizon, however, starting with the Giro d’Italia in May. Almeida is expected to line up there as team leader, but the long, flat individual time trial on day ten has already been circled in red by Vine.

He called it a very nice time trial and said that is the stage he is looking forward to most. Anything else that comes on top of that, he added, will be a bonus.