Jonas Vingegaard has revealed he was coughing up blood after his crash in Spain back in April, and feared he was about to die. Even if he did survive, he believed his career was over.
His wife, Trine Marie Vingegaard Hansen, was looking at the Itzulia Basque Country stage when the crashed happened and feared that even if her husband survived, he may suffer brain damage.
During an interview with Danish TV broadcaster, DR.dk, the couple reflected on the year and were in tears as they spoke to the crash, with Vingegaard saying he was fearful his wife and child, and unborn child at the time, would have to live their lives without him.
The stage 4 crash took out 12 riders including Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Primož Roglič (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe).
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Evenepoel suffered a fracture to his right collarbone and his right scapula. Though Roglič abandoned the race, he emerged largely unscathed and withdrew on the day because it was his second crash in quick succession.
However, Vingegaard was very badly injured, with seven broken ribs, a fractured sternum, a shattered collarbone and both lungs punctured and a broken finger.
"I can't breathe for the first ten seconds," Vingegaard says in the Danish TV interview of the moments after the crash, which occurred at speed on a descent. "I already know that something is wrong.
"When I finally can breathe again, I cough up blood. That's when I know it's completely crazy. I think I have some internal bleeding that means I'll either drown in my own blood or die from bleeding to death. So, yeah... I think that's the end of it.
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"When I was lying on the ground, I thought that if I survive this, I will end my career. But later we talked about it a lot, and we both thought I should continue. Because it is still my passion."
Trine Marie, who was expecting the couple's second child at the time, said though she was watching the race with friends, she stopped looking on when the race crashed.
She immediately knew it was serious and even before hearing from Visma-Lease a Bike about 30 minutes after the crash, she was already on the way to the airport, in Denmark, to travel to be with her husband.
"I'm glad he's alive, and I hope he's not brain-damaged. We can live with everything else," she recalls of how she felt at the time.
This year's edition of Itzulia Basque Country, run off in wet conditions, was dogged by crashes. Vingegaard said that just before his stage 4 crash - which kept him out racing for three months - he sensed something was about to happen.
"There is a tension in the field that perhaps shouldn't be there. It doesn't happen every time, but it does happen that things go wrong, and then maybe it's your brain trying to protect you from crashing," he said.
"I didn't really listen to that. Because there has been a battle for position and due to bad road conditions, I can't really brake. And then the bike just slips in front of me because I'm simply going too fast. This is the first time ever that I haven't tried to get back on the bike."
He would eventually return to racing in time for the Tour de France, which began on June 29th. He went on to win a stage and finished 2nd overall, behind Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
He rode just two more races after the Tour; abandoning Donostia San Sebastian Klasikoa two weeks after the Tour and then winning Tour de Pologne, ending his season after completing that race in mid August.
