Maxim Van Gils back on the bike after horror crash in Spain, but return still far away

It was a terrible fall in Spain: Van Gils was pushed into the barriers by Jan Christen of UAE Team Emirates-XRG in the sprint for second place. The Swiss rider was disqualified, but the damage had already been done. Van Gils was left battered and bruised, and on February 16, it was already clear that his spring campaign was over. With several fractures, he faced a lengthy spell on the sidelines.

That was difficult for him to accept. “As an athlete, you always want to get moving again as quickly as possible. I wanted to go faster, but the team had to slow me down a bit,” he says in a video from his team. After first being confined to bed, he was able to begin physical rehabilitation, and less than a month after his crash, he was already back on the rollers. Not much later, on March 23, he was able to ride outside again.

“It is five weeks after my crash in the Clásica Jaén,” Van Gils explains. “It is my first ride outside, about an hour with two small climbs. Nothing too big, because I still cannot really get out of the saddle properly. But I was really looking forward to this. I had already been on the rollers for a week, but that was getting boring.”

Being allowed back onto the road was therefore a wonderful feeling, but it also proved much harder than expected. “It is nice to be outside again,” he tells Jan Niklas-Droste, Head of Health & Performance at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. “I just do not have much feeling in my right arm. But it is more comfortable than the Tacx.”

“I expected it to be easy, but it was a little harder than I thought,” he explained afterwards. “My right side is a bit weaker, and I felt some tension. I will come back in about a month to do some tests, and hopefully I can take steps forward and start improving my form on the bike.” Now, four weeks after that first ride, Van Gils is already riding outdoors much more often.

However, a return is far from imminent. Earlier, the Belgian reported that he hoped to be back racing in June. “If all the races are hard now, the riders will be a bit tired by then. Maybe I will be fresher,” he said at the time. Whether he is still on schedule remains to be seen.