The Japan Times - Bernal says he'll be back despite 18 broken bones

The Colombian former Tour de France winner slammed into a bus on January 24 on a training run near Bogota.

"In one second," he said in an interview published on Saturday, "my life could have been completely gone."

Bernal told Colombian magazine Semana that he had gone out with friends, but according to his vague recollection, the others stopped after 20 kilometres and he continued alone.

He was riding in an aerodynamic position, at 62 kilometres per hour and with the wind at his back when his world changed.

"I crashed into the bus, a bus I had not seen at all," he said in the video interview which he gave sitting outdoors in an armchair with his head propped up on a pillow.

"I was hanging on to the bike," he said. "Everything hurt, absolutely everything."

He broke 18 bones, including his right femur which seemed, he said, "as if it almost wanted to come out of the skin."

The multiple fractures, for which he was hospitalised for two weeks, "caused me the most intense pain of my life," he said.

He underwent five surgeries on injuries to his spine, leg and right hand.

Doctors said he had a 95 per cent chance of becoming a paraplegic or dying.

Bernal, who is 25, won the Tour de France in 2019 and the Giro d'Italia last year. Before the accident, he had extended his contract with his team Ineos until 2026.

After leaving the clinic on February 7 he has shown rapid signs of recovery.

Although he looks fragile in the Semana interview, videos he has posted on social media show him walking, pedalling and even kicking a football.

"I want to get back to my best, I have faith. I don't know why, but I think I can do it and I think I can do it quickly," he said.

"I don't know if I'm going to reach the level to win a Tour de France again, because it's already difficult when one is 100 per cent," he said. "But I want to be the best version of Egan Bernal."

"I don't know if it's going to be a year, ten years or six months or three months," he said.

S.Fujimoto--JT