After an anxious few days awaiting news about Dutch national champion Fabio Jakobsen, it has now emerged he has been woken from the medically induced coma he was in.
Organisers of the Tour de Pologne have said the 23-year, who crashed on the opening stage of the race, was awake and described his condition as "good".
"We have good news from the hospital in Sosnowiec! Fabio
Jakobsen is awake now from the coma. Condition is 'good,'" the race
organisers said on Twitter.
That reference to his condition being “good” appears to relate to the fact he has no brain or spinal injuries; something doctors had already announced but were waiting to confirm when Jakobsen awoke.
"The patient is conscious, follows orders, is
disconnected from the ventilator, so he is breathing alone," the director
of the hospital in Sosnowiec, south Poland, said.
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"I think that if he survived such a fall, he will
return to sport for sure," the director added in remarks to the media.
Jakobsen (Deceuninck-QuickStep) crashed right on the finish line of Wednesday’s opener in Poland when he was squeezed into the crowd control barriers as Dylan Groenewegen (Jumbo Visma) moved off his sprinting line.
Jakobsen was sent crashing through the barriers and he hit a race official and the upright scaffolding holding the finish line gantry in place.
His helmet appeared to fly off, such was the impact, while his bike and the barriers spun back into the road and took down a group of other riders, all sprinting at high-speed after a downhill finish.
Groenewegen was first over the line, with Jakobsen second, but Groenewegen was disqualified, suffered a broken collar bone and also faces disciplinary action from the UCI.
He has apologised for his sprint and his Jumbo Visma squad issued a statement saying it was discussing what had happened within the team.
For now, however, the good news is that Jakobsen is awake and it is hoped he will make a full recovery.
He has already undergone surgery on facial injuries but broke other bones in his skull. While he is on the road to recovery, it seems, he will face a long period of rehabilitation.
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