"I still have forty to fifty centimeters of titanium in my leg" - Tao Geoghegan Hart reveals lasting effects of Giro d'Italia horror crash

Tao Geoghegan Hart looked like taking a possible second Maglia Rosa of his career earlier this year at the Giro d'Italia. Sadly for the Brit, disaster struck as he crashed out in painful style.

"It's going much better than expected. You try not to have high expectations because you can't predict such things. There is no timeline for this, although we did have an optimistic schedule regarding the rehabilitation phase, which we wanted to complete by the end of September. We succeeded," Geoghegan Hart, who has left INEOS Grenadiers for Lidl-Trek over the transfer window, told In de Leiderstrui.

Although it's taken the best part of a year, Geoghegan Hart is finally feeling like himself again now, despite some lasting effects of his injury. "The training is going well, although I expected some setbacks in the body, but everything is going great. There is nothing wrong with me anymore, although I still have forty to fifty centimeters of titanium in my leg," he reveals. "That will be removed next year during the offseason. You don't feel anything, although I am often asked whether I can pass security at airports. Apparently it's just a bit of titanium, so even the latest scanners don't work."

Looking ahead to next season, Geoghegan Hart is set to lead Lidl-Trek at the Tour de France. After so long with INEOS though, that will still take some getting used to. "Even now we still have a separate app group in which the Giro group communicates with each other. There were five guys in that group who could have ridden a classification themselves, plus world hour record holder Filippo Ganna. It could easily have been about egos, but I am proud that I invested a lot in the atmosphere in that group and that is why I also watched the Giro," he recalls. "Normally that would have been tough, but now I was curious about what those guys would do. Of course it is difficult not to know what I would have been capable of, but it is also nice to try to reach that level again."

"It was difficult to leave, I had been there since 2014. A team with a great history, and it is difficult that I was not able to say goodbye to many people. There's just no right time to do that. When exactly do you change teams? In other sports there is a day when you can thank people and reflect on the past. In cycling there is no such transition, nor is there such a time. How do you say thank you to 120 people? No one looks back, everyone always looks forward. I see all the people from INEOS at the races again and I am grateful to them. I've made a lot of friends from it."