"If I had given up in the Vuelta, I would have just felt like a loser" - Jan Maas reveals that he finished Vuelta a Espana with broken ribs and coughing blood, but hid it

Jan Maas was not in contention for stage wins at the recent Vuelta a Espana but he was at times in the center of attention for the wrong reasons. Amidst an illness-devastated Team Jayco AlUla, Maas was one of the only three finishers but he reveals that not was only was he injured, but he had hidden a dramatic health situation in fears of being taken out of the race.

“I sat on the bike like a zombie. The first two weeks I actually rode quite well, but in stage thirteen I crashed on the descent of the Aubisque. I broke my ribs, it turned out afterwards," Maas shares in an interview with Cycling Inside. "I actually knew I had broken them, but I didn't want to have a photo (X-ray, ed.) taken. I was afraid that the doctor, the organization or who knows what, would say: you are not allowed to realize your dream, you are not allowed to finish the Vuelta. So I tried to finish the Vuelta as tough as possible.”

The Dutchman did what some fans occasionally fear and bring up as a downside of the sport, which is the downplaying serious health situations. Maas reveals in the interview that not only was he consciously deciding not to have an X-ray taken of his ribs following the tough crash, but that he also hid later symptoms that emerged from it. “The three men who remained were all not feeling well. We didn't test positive (for Covid-19, ed.) at that time, but we were all coughing."

"With a broken or bruised rib, that's not really nice... Then it really went downhill. I didn't tell anyone, but the last two or three days I also spit blood in the finals of the stages. Did I not think: this is going way too far? I wouldn't recommend it to anyone and now I wouldn't do it myself either. But at that moment… I guess I just wanted to prove it to myself, there was just that intrinsic motivation, and the stubbornness that I have or something.”

Maas did end up finishing the race, even if in great suffering. His season did not end there, but he tells how the night following the end in Madrid he went to the hospital where the injuries were finally diagnosed, and he was also discovered to have temporary lung injuries and presence of blood in them. “When I was on my back I was coughing up blood all the time, so I was just panicking," he says of the night following the race. "One affects your lungs and the other affects your airways."

What the 27-year old seeked to do was to prove himself within the peloton, it was his debut Grand Tour and often riders feel under pressure to perform in search of their continuation at the top of the sport. "If I had given up in the Vuelta, I would have just felt like a loser," he admits. "It even goes so far that I am glad that I found out that I had those infections and those broken ribs, because if I had only broken a rib and deteriorated so much due to fatigue, I would have felt like a loser felt. That's how bad it is in my head.”