Egan Bernal details life-threatening accident: "He started to tranquilize me but I couldn't breathe"

The INEOS Grenadiers rider has revealed the details that led to his accident a few weeks ago in Colombia that put his career and life at risk.

"The doctor told me there was a 95% chance that I would either die or become paraplegic and that in his whole career only two patients had walked out well, and I was one of them," Egan Bernal said in an extended face-to-face interview with Colombia's Revista Semana.

"We left for a normal training ride with the team. Some were in a normal road bike, I was in a time-trial bike... I started my interval... It had to be a very hard interval, so I went. The position in the bike is very agressive," he described, as the events that led up to the collision.

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"When I arrived at Gachancipá [location where the crash happened] I looked ahead and there was nothing. There was a car behind escorting me... I started to look [at my speed] and it said 59, 60, 61, 62 and when I saw that speed is when I hit the bus... I was in so much that what I did was look down, I was laying on the road."

After being approached by mechanic who was escorting him he detailed: "He started to tranquilize me but I couldn't breathe... It always happens to someone when one takes a hit, the air goes out and after a while comes back, but nothing came back... When I felt like I was passing out, the air came back and that's when I looked and saw the bus."

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On the 24th of January Egan Bernal hit a halted bus at high speed. He suffered from over a dozen broken bones including several ribs, vertebras, femur and a double pneumothorax. 

"The first thing he [team mechanic] did was call the team doctor, who was in the hotel. The soigneur brought the doctor. They arrived very quick, thanks to him I'm still alive," he continued.

He then went on to describe the gruesome details of his leg injury and his desperation: "I looked at the leg and I said it was inflamated, swollen. The bone almost broke through the skin and I thought: it was the femur. Obviously it was broken... The doctor stabilized it."

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As the doctor and some people around helped position and stabilize his injury, Bernal mentioned: "I was telling them 'no no, please no'. That helped me not to loose as much blood, I think I lost two and a half liters. Those small things they did helped me so that when I got to the hospital I wasn't so bad."

"I did cry. When they did my femur, when they put it in position, it was a moment of impotence where I didn't want them to do it... My neck hurt, my spine, everything, when they did that movement is when I cried a little," he admitted.

Bernal went on to report his gratefulness for the doctors of the Clínica de la Universidad de la Sabana, where he was in for almost two weeks: "Thanks to them I'm alive, thanks to them I can't walk, I can move... I feel like thanks to them aswell I have a second chance."