Wout van Aert leads ahead after Vuelta a España accident:One crash and too many injury……
There was a risk of infection, too, so we had to treat it quite aggressively with antibiotics to avoid having another operation. That was a big setback.”
Van Aert said that the last few days had seen an improvement and he was able to walk again, albeit with crutches.
“And fortunately, my cartilage, kneecap and ligaments are all intact. So it is not an injury that will keep me off the bike permanently.”
Van Aert said that his Vuelta crash was far less serious than the one he suffered in the April Classics, which wrecked the middle third of his season and left him with multiple fractures. But he said that having made such a successful comeback at the Spanish Grand Tour – where he led the race for a day, won three stages, and was heading the points and mountains classifications at the time he fell – the mental impact of yet another big fall had been considerable. As he put it, “given how many times I’ve crashed this season, this one in Spain really was a crash too many”.
“It’s not been easy. I needed help for everything, from getting out of bed to going to the toilet,” he told Dernière Heure. “But it was impossible to bend my leg and that was very frustrating. I’ve also had the disappointment of ending a season this way, it’s tough to handle. I was on the point of taking home a new jersey from the Vuelta and that was very hard to accept.”
