"The shape has come back really quickly after the injury" - Jay Vine set to race Tour de Romandie before Giro d'Italia tilt

Jay Vine started off his year in a high with his new team, winning the Tour Down Under back home in Australia, but has since had a difficult time in his opening World Tour year. Vine has suffered a knee injury which has hindered him throughout the whole spring, but he now looks optimistically towards the Giro d'Italia.

“It was a long and annoying process to try to get the knee mended, but first and foremost, the team was just trying to make sure there was no chronic or prolonged pain and that I’d be able to continue the season without surgery," Vine revealed in an interview with Cyclingnews. "Everything’s come good now, so that’s encouraging.”

Vine beat Simon Yates and Pello Bilbao to win the Tour Down Under. He was immediately given a leading role within UAE Team Emirates after putting in impressive performances at last year's Vuelta a Espana where he won two mountain stages, and as he returned to Europe following January everything seemed to be going in the right path.

However at the UAE Tour this proved not to be the case. He was dropped in the team time-trial whilst being a candidate for the overall win, and did not start stage 3. He hasn't raced since, he was suffering from knee pain which forced him to abandon the race. “Basically, I had to rest for seven days, no bike, which was the annoying thing,” he says. “I was in quite a bit of pain after the team time trial, but within two days, I could walk around and do squats with no issues," he continued. "But within five minutes of hopping on a bike again, the pain would come back, so we took seven days completely off.”

“Everyone kept telling me that I’d got stuff in that bank, and so that was ok, but my outlook on the situation definitely wasn’t that. I certainly wasn’t ready to go on a break. Mentally, at the end of last season, I was done, I was finished – I wanted to eat nothing but brownies and pizza and not even look at my bike," Vine explained. "But when this injury happened, I’d only just sort of begun, so the mental side was difficult. I like to fix problems by finding a solution and getting on with it. And in this case, the solution was: hurry up and wait. So there’s not much you can do.”

With the main spring stage-races just ahead Vine wanted to be in good form, but quickly understood that wouldn't be possible, and he wasn't to race until today. In order not to sacrifice his preparation for the Giro d'Italia, where he looks to perform at a high level in the mountains, he's opted not to race and instead focus on slowly building back his form through training.

He's been at Sierra Nevada training at altitude, and has also spent time at his home in Andorra. All within a close area, Vine was able to avoid major travelling and will likely start the Tour de Romandie soon as his return race. “This removes travel days and any tapering before or after Romandie. It allows me the most amount of days on the bike to get the work in,” he added. “I really like training and the process of preparing for an event. I can prepare really well for an event on my own in training."

For the Giro his ambitions are unknown, but he will be teaming up with João Almeida who starts as one of the big favourites, and the Australian has been keeping an eye specially at the Volta a Catalunya where many of the Giro's big hitters were present. “The shape has come back really quickly after the injury, so that’s a good sign,” he says. “Obviously, the other guys have had some really good racing at Catalunya and Tirreno. João is flying at the moment, and then Remco and Primoz are also riding really well, funnily enough," he concluded.