Egan Bernal Remains Mentally Strong and Focused on His Comeback
The biggest chapter in Egan Bernal’s long and inspiring return to racing after a near-fatal crash remains an uncertainty. Speaking to French national newspaper L’Équipe, Bernal laid out his hopes for the near future, which include the biggest prize in cycling.
“If I participate in the Tour [de France], I’d be keen to go for the overall and finish as high up the ranking as possible. But if in the first couple of stages, I lose five or six minutes, then I’ll recalibrate my objectives,” Bernal said.
It may seem like a stretch to claim that you’re a GC guy without even knowing if you’re going to make your team’s selection for the biggest and perhaps most brutal race on the calendar. But Bernal knows what’s required to win the Grande Boucle. He took the yellow jersey in 2019 riding for INEOS Grenadiers, who he still races for.
However, much of his mid-summer plans depend on the kind of performance Bernal puts forward in the Tour de Suisse, which he started Sunday with an individual time trial. In regards to that race, he told L’Équipe that his goal was to “give the maximum for a result and at the same time keep in mind that the main objective is to reach the start of the Tour in the best form possible.”
He finished forty-fourth in the opening stage of the Tour de Suisse and sits thirty-ninth overall through two stages. And while most of the Tour’s main GC guys are skipping the race, the Tour de Suisse still counts plenty of stiff competition, including Bernal’s teammate Tom Pidcock, UAE Team Emirates’ João Almeida and Adam Yates, and Tour de France podium finisher Richard Carapaz of EF Education-EasyPost.
Bernal nearly lost his life in a 2022 training accident where he slammed into the rear of a stopped passenger bus at over thirty miles per hour. In the wreck, Bernal suffered a fractured right femur, a fractured right patella, chest trauma, a punctured lung, and several rib fractures.
He spent the remainder of the year recuperating and returned to racing in 2023, where he rode in the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, the Critérium du Dauphiné, and Ituliza Basque Country. His best finishes were a pair of eighth places in the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Hongrie.
Bernal has looked strong this year, finishing third in O Gran Camiño, seventh in Paris-Nice, and tenth in the Tour de Romandie. However, the highlight for the twenty-seven-year-old Colombian came when he finished in third place in the Volta a Catalunya, his first WorldTour podium since the crash.
Speaking about the improved results he’s seeing this season, Bernal said, “It’s, above all, the result of a lot of hard work. I’m very pleased to see I’m back at a high level after everything that’s happened to me. It helps me stay calm.”
He added, “Sometimes we overthink things, but cycling is pretty simple. It’s mainly about if you train well, eat well, rest up, and sleep. If your body is in good shape, form comes naturally.”
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