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Crashing, Recovering and Crashing again

August 17, 2010 - Filed under: Rider Blogs

Comments (6)

When you’re winning races and everything is going well, you have fans everywhere. But how many are still there when you really need them, when you have a bad year with injuries or illnesses?

Being a cyclist, all you want to do is being on your bike to train or race. But things don’t always go the way you want them to go and that’s the reason why I am not on my bike right now…After crashing in the giro, I was out for 2 weeks with a heavy concussion. After more than a month without racing, I went fully motivated to Bretagne for the start of Route de France! Stage 1 was a prologue without corners, so it would have been difficult to crash there again…Stage 2 went well, but 3 days in a row without any bad luck was too much asked, so on 3km of the finish, a French girl decided to go down and take me with her!

Consequences: broken collarbone…and out again!

I could be silly and depressed and complain about all my bad luck this year, but if I look at the bigger picture it’s not so dramatic. If you look at our team this season only, there’s plenty of riders who have had bad luck by crashing and breaking bones, hurting knees, shaking their brains, etc. “It’s part of cycling”, but unfortunately not the nicest part!

Getting injured always includes a certain time of rehabilitation and working on your comeback. If you’re healthy, you usually train with some other cyclists, but when you’re working on a comeback, most of the trainings you have to do alone. It’s you, your pain, your mind that’s going nuts sometimes ( do I feel pain? Yes? No? am I alright?) , and if you start to get better your bike. It’s very important in such times to know that someone is there, supporting you. And that’s when you realize how lucky you are to be on Cervelo Test Team.

After my crash in France, soigneur Luca took me to the hospital (again!) and got me a little present to cheer me up. Coming back to the hotel, my teammates took care of me like I was a little baby! (ok, sometimes I look like the little baby of the team too…)

The next day, our mechanic Matthieu brought Carla (with a concussion) and me to the CrossKlinik in Basel, where we got a nice double room so we could give eachother some company. The same day, they took X-rays again, to see that my collarbone was actually broken. Dr. Andy Goesele came to see us that same night, although it was already way too late for him to still be working! We discussed if I needed surgery and decided that it was a nice fracture, so I didn’t need any screws in my body. The next day, they arranged a physio and they put me on the rollers to give me some advice on training on rollers with a broken collarbone! Everyone in the entire Crossklinik gave me the feeling that I was the most important patient of the whole hospital and everyone supported me really well !

It made me realize that it doesn’t matter if you’re Thor Hushovd or Lieselot Decroix, they take care of all the riders equally and want to help everyone as good as possible!

And that’s when I realized that we are a real team…sports directors, riders, mechanics, soigneurs, managers, doctors, …everyone is there for you when you’re going good but when you have bad luck, everyone takes care of you and supports you even more! And that’s a real team! Thanks a lot!

6 responses for this Entry

Joel Zarabia says:

October 14, 2010

Exelente Artìculo....

Eddy says:

August 27, 2010

Hello,

What did I read - Cervelo will stop with the team.....

How bad do you find that?...

I wish you -if it's true- a good new team!

BTW.. how can I (and the other 'bloggers') know that you (can) read our entries? I can't find any 'reply' or so...?

Anyhow, good luck!

'Van ne Roeselaarse supporter'

Helene says:

August 19, 2010

Nice blog-entry Lieselot! You're so optimistic!

Good recovery!

xxx

Eddy says:

August 18, 2010

After looking everywhere else... I found the answer on my question here.. Wath's going on with Lieselot? ....

In a (little) article in 'Het Nieuwsblad' I saw that you have 'crashed'.. and that was the last thing I found. Everyday I looked in the results, without finding your name.

And today... I found the RSS-feeds of Cervélo and.... yep..... here it is.

Hope you recover well! As I can see, you're in a wonderfull team there!

And ... you can find it 'normal' that they all look for their 'little baby' .. or should I say 'Piepkuiken.. :-)...).

Keep well!

'Van ne Roeselaarse supporter'

marc says:

August 18, 2010

in swiss hospitals its like a hotel dont care we care about u, they do most very well the job and in the crossclinik Basel this is 5*

Stephen says:

August 17, 2010

Great article. Makes me want to ride for Cervelo.