Tadej Pogacar told the New York Times just how bad his Vuelta crash was: 'I wasn’t a pleasant person to be around'

In a major interview with The New York Times, Tadej Pogacar revealed that he broke two more vertebrae in his serious crash at the Vuelta a España. The Slovenian, who also looked ahead to 2027 at an event hosted by his sponsor MyWhoosh on Saturday, gave the American publication his first major one-on-one interview in nearly a year.

In it, Pogacar mainly talks about his recovery from his serious crash in early September.

“There’s actually a funny story. Two weeks ago, I was in Slovenia for another CT scan. I knew I had a C7 fracture, but it turned out I had broken two more vertebrae, the T1 and T2. At that point, I was glad I wasn’t competing in the European Championships in Slovenia, which had actually been my goal.”

It’s been two months since the crash, and he’s doing well now. “I do have to be careful not to fall off my bike or lift heavy things with my left arm or neck. But I can actually do everything normally again now,” said the Slovenian, who had a tough time during the first few weeks.

“I had to wait two days for the surgery, so I spent two days in bed doing nothing. You just feel sorry for yourself.”

"I had to be helped into the shower by the team doctor. I’d get dizzy as soon as I stood up or laid my head down. I wasn’t myself at all, and it was so hard," she says candidly.

“Mentally, I was really struggling for the first two weeks. I was very down. I wasn’t a pleasant person to be around. I don’t think Urska was happy to see me at home, because I was just depressed. You know, I just didn’t feel anything at all.”

Pogacar’s recovery—he also suffered a concussion—wasn’t a steady upward trajectory. “When I started using the stationary bike and going to physical therapy every day, I began to feel better—mentally, too," he said.

"But it was a daily struggle. Some days I wanted to do everything: physical therapy, the gym, rollers, a two-hour walk. You just have that energy. But the next day, I might just want to do nothing all day.”

"People who've been through it themselves, or know someone with a broken vertebra, know how serious it is. It was strange, because it didn't really hurt where it was broken; I was focusing more on my collarbone," he explains.

"You have the internet, and you can look it up. You see that it’s pretty serious and that you shouldn’t take it lightly. It’s pretty scary to think about."

"For the first four or five days I was in the hospital, my recovery score was yellow, but my heart rate variability and heart rate were really, really bad," Pogacar adds, citing the data.

“After that, over the next four or five days, my recovery score was completely in the red. I lay on the couch all day and did nothing. It took four weeks for my score to turn green again—only then was I able to train and move around again, and my heart rate returned to normal.”

Pogacar’s crash this year was not an isolated incident. Just a few weeks earlier, Finlay Tarling died during the Tour of Portugal. “These accidents are becoming more and more common. I’ve seen statistics showing that they mainly affect riders under 23, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence, because the organization of these races is of an even lower standard than in the WorldTour.”

"There are fewer safety protocols, fewer police officers, and fewer people maintaining the roads. Even when you compare the Tour de France to another race on the WorldTour calendar, the difference is enormous. In the Tour [de France], there are police officers on almost every corner, signage is very good, and the road is kept clean. In other races, that’s just not there, is it?” he wonders in The Athletic, the sports division of The New York Times.

Pogacar sees yet another problem. “Speeds are much higher, but the finishes are the same. And there are more speed bumps than there were ten years ago—they’re meant to slow down traffic, not to be raced over. The organisers should clear the road better, improve signage, and make the finish less dangerous. The finish doesn’t have to be wide and straight on an eight-lane road like at the Tour of Guangxi, but we do need to avoid poor road surfaces and turns in the final 500 meters, potholes, speed bumps, and roundabouts.”