Team Garmin-Slipstream’s captain Christian Vande Velde spoke with Cyclingnews about his past month — from crashing out of the Giro, recovering from the subsequent injuries and trying to regain his form for the upcoming Tour de France. Vande Velde is schedules to return to racing next week at the Tour de Suisse.
CN: It was a bad crash. You sustained three fractured vertebrae, a cracked pelvis in addition to the two broken ribs.
CVV: Yeah, I was beat-up pretty bad for a while and probably started pushing it a bit too early. It wasn’t like I could take a few days off and then start training again.
CN: Since the crash you’ve been off the radar a bit. Tell us a bit about your recovery.
CVV: It’s been a long process and it’s been tedious at times, but I’ve had a tonne of support from the team, from everyone really. For example, I have a really steep hill at the end of my drive and I couldn’t even ride up it to start with. So the team would drive me to the other side of the hill so we could go for a ride. We started with 30 minutes and then built that up and now and I can do whatever I want. But it’s been hard unravelling my body after how tight and sore it was.
