"I thought I was going to die" - Jonas Vingegaard opens up about traumatic Itzulia crash

Itzulia Basque Country is a race that will be marked on the 2024 cycling season but for the worst reasons. A crash early in the race saw Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic - three of the four Tour de France's main contenders - crash at high speed and Vingegaard suffered massive injuries that had him fear for his life. In the first rest day of the Tour de France, the defending champion opens up about how bad the situation was on the ground.

"It was so bad that I thought I was going to die. And if I did survive, I thought to myself to stop cycling," Vingegaard said in a press conference this Monday morning. The Dane crashed at speed and hit rocks on the side of the road. Whilst he managed to avoid a concrete gulley where several riders fell into, he was in no better conditions. He stayed on the ground for several minutes motionless before having been stabilized on an ambulance - a total of four riders required this serious attention: Fellow climbers Jay Vine and Steff Cras being two of them also with severe injuries. Vingegaard punctured a lung, suffered fractured ribs and a collarbone.

"After such a serious fall, it is certainly something you think about. Then you wonder whether it is worth exposing yourself to the risks of cycling." He talks about his family, who also feared the worst after the incident: "They meant everything to me during the process. They always supported me. Trine (his wife, ed.) also thought I was going to die, but we have now been able to put it behind us... I had become a bit nonchalant, thinking that it wouldn’t happen to me. That was because I was always good at avoiding heavy crashes and could always brake in time.”

It was a traumatic situation that also changed Vingegaard's season and career completely. But incredibly, he has managed to return to racing at the Tour with great form and having overcome several obstacles that his crash had left him with, such as riding on the time-trial bike or fear of descending.

“I trained a lot on descents and Wout [van Aert] and Christophe [Laporte] can stay with me. I was at a training camp in Tignes for three weeks and they know how to descend. I was put to the test there and had to push my limits again to keep up with them.”

Vingegaard enters the first rest day of the Grand Boucle in third place and very much in position to win the whole race for a third year in a row. But he values more the fact that he's able to continue cycling, specially at such level, after his accident: “That I can get on my bike every day. I enjoy it more now and I am more relaxed in the big Tour circus. It doesn't matter so much how well it goes, the fact that I am at the start is the most important thing."

"Somehow I want to be more cautious. But you can be cautious and at the same time fight for the victory in cycling races. I think I just think more about when to take risks," he concluded.