Flor Marina Gómez is repeating, 24 years later, the same process with the same character, her son, Egan Arley Bernal Gómez. As if he were a newborn, she takes care of him in his bed, feeds him and has even had to change his diapers.
He has also lived, once again, the emotion of seeing how, little by little, he began to stand up, then began to take small steps, then to walk on his own and, finally, to see how, little by little, he begins to get on a bicycle, for now, static. Egan Bernal was born again exactly one month ago, on January 24.
The drama
His life could have ended that morning. Around 10:01 in the morning, he trained as if he were doing a time trial, along with several of his teammates at the Ineos Grenadiers: his compatriots Daniel Martínez and Brandon Rivera, Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz, Costa Rican Andrey Amador and Spaniards Carlos Rodríguez and Omar Friar.
The time trial demands a lot of concentration and Egan, in his desire to always improve, monitored his speed. 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62… Boom! The training was over abruptly. An inter-municipal bus stopped on the same road where Bernal was beginning to pick up speed. He couldn’t stop. The blow was dry and the back of the bus was as if it had been hit by another car. But it was Egan’s body, which was left with many, many bruises.
“I crashed into the bus at 62 kilometers per hour. The bus was still. At that moment imagine the pain. I fell and said: I hit myself very hard. It was a dry hit. I thought it had not been a person, because he would have slipped. That it had not been a motorcycle or a car, because it would have gone flying. I thought it was a mule or a bus. He was in so much pain that all he did was look down, he was lying on the track. At that moment the person who was accompanying me got out, ”explained Egan in an interview with Semana.
As Egan was conscious after the accident, he did not realize, at first, what had happened to him. The only thing he asked for was something to ease the pain. Not even he himself knew the seriousness of his injuries. This was disclosed over the hours, while he became a regular visitor to the operating room and the Universidad de la Sabana Clinic issued statements about his health status.
(You may be interested in: Egan Bernal: these are the keys to his surprising recovery)
Egan had a whole collection of injuries. He suffered, according to one of the hospital bulletins, “vertebral fracture, right femur fracture, right patella fracture, chest trauma, a punctured lung and several fractured ribs due to the strong impact.”
But then, as the days went by, more injuries became known. Four days after the accident it was revealed that he was to return to the operating room for two more operations. “The first is an osteosynthesis of a fracture of the second metacarpal of the right hand, which will be performed by the hand surgery team. The second is maxillo-facial to manage dento-alveolar fractures that it presents in the mouth,” explained the clinic spokesperson.
But that same day, Egan drew strength from where he did not have and put a short, but emotional message on his Twitter account. “After having a 95 percent chance of becoming a paraplegic and nearly losing my life doing what I love to do most. Today I want to thank God, @ClinicaUsabana, all his specialists for doing the impossible, my family, @mafemotas and all of you … ”, he published.
“It was a painful thing. I have no words to express everything. Now they are blessings and joys and thanks to God that he gave us another chance to have him alive; with the accident he could have stayed there, or in a wheelchair. My God is great and powerful, we have him alive, walking, it is a fast process due to his mental and physical capacity. Painful, but we are facing it and every day is going to be better,” said Marina, excited, in an interview with Caracol Radio.
A miraculous step by step
Egan showed that he is a fighter: just 14 days after the serious accident, he was discharged and posed, standing, next to the group of doctors who took care of him during all that time. The recovery changed scenery. Now he was going to his house.
His fans began to follow his social networks as if it were a reality show, waiting for a new sign of the evolution of his health. And Egan, little by little, released them, which aroused optimism about her health.
On February 10, three days after leaving the clinic, Egan published a photograph with his masseur at Ineos, Cristian Alonso, to whom he left very special words.
“’My masseur’, and actually my friend, a trusted person and the one who has to put up with everything I have to say after each race, who cheers me up on hard days and often scolds me when I need it, He has accompanied me at the height of my career and now at the most difficult moment,” he wrote.
“Almost 5 years working together and what he has done for me is often priceless, because it is the small details of day to day that really matter. After the accident he stayed to support my family and make sure that when I left the clinic he had everything I needed for my rehabilitation. We should all have a Cristian Alonso in our lives”, he added.
(Also read: Egan Bernal: moving story of his mother, “there are moments of great pain”)
In this process of telling his progress, Marina, his mother, became fundamental. She not only acted as support but as a camerawoman. She was slowly showing her progress. Her first steps, with the help of doctors; how she did push-ups on a stretcher, how she got on the exercise bike to give her first pedal strokes after the crash against the bus, 22 days after the accident.
Even Egan was encouraged to venture into another sport for his recovery: with a narration of a goal by Lionel Messi in the background, Bernal appeared in a video kicking a ball. The miracle continued.
Given the seriousness of the accident he suffered, it is a miracle that Egan is already taking steps and, above all, pedaling. But the first objective now is for him to fully recover the functions of his body, before thinking about returning to competition. It is a long process and, above all, a lot of patience.
“The process of returning to being the cyclist of before is according to a complex and large planning. The first is rehabilitation, the second will be the retraining phase, and the third is training,” specialized doctor Gustavo Castro told EL TIEMPO.
“The advantage is that the fractures were surgically stabilized, that gives the endorsement to begin a rapid recovery to be able to start moving faster. The idea is that the tissues and the bone are allowed to stick in a good way, that they have the structure of this again, and that will take about six months,” added Castro.
For Egan, who had already suffered from pain in his back before the accident, the evolution of his spinal operations is also key.
“Everything has a number of variables that have to be monitored. According to these results, it is necessary to look at how the body begins to move, especially the spine. It is a long, costly process and nothing can be said about the time, because that is linked to the evolution of each process,” said Camilo Pardo, another doctor with a long history in national cycling.
Another of the injuries that requires special care is the fracture he suffered in the patella. “The knee for a cyclist is the axis and he had an open, multiple fracture and the cartilage can suffer. We have to wait to see how the articular cartilage of the patella evolves, so it doesn’t bother you. Egan spent almost two weeks in bed, it is an attack on the entire musculoskeletal system and the muscles atrophy. The youth and the desire are going to carry it forward and that has been seen, ”said the orthopedist and traumatologist Luis Alfredo Moreno.
And another fundamental part of the recovery is the psychological part, although the champion of the Tour de France in 2019 and the Giro d’Italia in 2021 has shown impressive strength in that regard. However, another thing will be when, as everyone around him expects, he can return to the competition.
It is not easy to tell the athlete that he is no longer going to fight for this or that race, but that now he has to fight to return to being the human being he was before, because that causes the mood to go down.
“It is not easy to tell the athlete that he is no longer going to fight in this or that race, but that now he has to fight to return to being the human being he was before, because that causes the mood to go down. You have to readjust goals and that affects motivation. You have to recompose your goals, “said sports psychologist Andres Felipe Rodriguez.
The world of cycling does not stop sending messages to Egan and he has recognized that affection. He wants to go back, but he knows it’s a slow process.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be at that level of winning a Tour de France again because it’s already difficult to win a Tour de France when you’re completely well. 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, six months or three months soon,” he concluded. A month ago, when details of his injuries were known, it was hard to imagine this progress. Egan is alive again.
JOSE ORLANDO ASCENCIO
Sports Sub-Editor
@Josasc
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