"I ended up at the doctor's office in Santa Maria" - Dylan van Baarle reveals crash whilst on holiday in Curacao

After a successful first campaign in the colours of Jumbo-Visma, Dylan van Baarle was supposed to be enjoying some well-deserved rest and relaxation whilst on holiday with his partner, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, in Curacao.

On his podcast In Koers however, the 2022 winner of Paris-Roubaix revealed how a crash during a mountain bike ride left him injured and in the hands of the doctor. "We did an individual race on November 12 and a duo race on the 19th, on Curacao. We were in quite a good position, second behind Fabio Jakobsen and Marc de Maar. We were ten seconds behind, but could see them going the whole time because it was a long, flat stretch of ten miles," he begins his tale.

"Pauline took over and there were very deep puddles, where I didn't want to take the risk of driving at full speed and ending up in such a puddle," he continues. "I looked around the edges a bit and tried to hit the stones as little as possible, but then my handlebars got stuck in a bush and I went under in the water. That was nice..."

Despite the initial pain, van Baarle doesn't fear any lasting effects thankfully. "The problem there is that you have this coral-like stone, which is super sharp. That's exactly where I fell on my knee, which looked ugly for a while," he concludes. "It is not too bad. The next day it was a bit stiff, but luckily it wasn't too bad in the end. I ended up at the doctor's office in Santa Maria, where they helped me a lot."