After brutal injuries and coma, Julian Mertens back on the bike and hoping to make a comeback in 2024 - "Being a top athlete has helped me take big steps forward"

Julian Mertens, rider of Bingoal WB, suffered a brutal crash in late May where he suffered numerous serious injuries and was put into an artificial coma to save his life. There was success, and now the Belgian rider is back on the bike after several months of rehabilitation.

“For me, everything stopped at the moment of the accident itself. A tractor had lost part of its load on the road. I certainly lost control of my bike and hit the vehicle," Mertens tells in a message shared by the team. He shares the terrifying list of injuries: “The physical consequences were very significant. My entire upper body, or almost, was fractured, nine ribs, two fractures to the spine, fractured shoulder blade and clavicle, broken jaw and teeth, arms, vertebrae, back of the head, left leg insensible for a few days… The total. I was put in an induced coma for a few days."

The 26-year old underwent multiple surgeries to be able to regain full function of his body but amazingly, he has managed to recover from the injuries. And five months after the crash he got back on the bike. "I was able to very gradually begin to mobilize, to relearn how to walk with my physiotherapist. I had another operation in July on my spine where a prosthesis was implanted. Revalidation could then begin."

He holds a contract until 2024, the climber was eager to recover as best as possible in order to try and maintain his career. "Being a top athlete has helped me take big steps forward. I was able to start running a little again, swimming. I saw my bike again in October. I admit that at the beginning, I felt more tension than usual but it gave me great pleasure to start riding a little again."

“I doubted, I admit. We didn't know, at the beginning, how all these injuries, these fractures, would evolve. The doctors themselves could not say precisely. At this level, we are no longer in the field of exact science, health is everyone's own. I was lucky that everything developed well for me," he happily shares. "I had the first positive feeling after my second operation, when I felt that my progress was rapid. I regained energy."

The off-season is still long and Mertens in unsure of what comes next. But he is ambitioning a return to team training and racing next year. “I want to give time to time, move forward, step by step. It is therefore difficult for me to clearly see the future, to envisage the moment when I will have recovered all my means. I see things in the short term and I hope to make further progress in the coming weeks," he concludes. "My first goal is, and I sincerely hope, to participate in the training courses with the team, even if my level will be adapted to my condition, even if I first train individually before joining a group. »