peter moreve

“There’s actually a funny story, two weeks ago, I was in Slovenia and I went to do another CT scan. I knew I had a C7 fracture, but then we saw I had two more broken vertebrae, the T1 and T2. At that moment, I was happy I didn’t do the European Championships, which had been my initial goal. When I saw I had three broken vertebrae? I’m just happy to be alive, actually, or just to be standing. I don’t have discomfort anymore, I have to be careful not to crash on the bike, or do some heavy lifting with my left arm or with my neck. But I can do basically everything normal now. I think I had ice cream almost every day when I got out of the hospital, for almost two weeks straight, anything on the chocolate side, I really like proper gelato. There’s this Nocciolata (an Italian chocolate and hazelnut flavor) that we have here in Monaco that is super good. The day after, I was like, ‘Let’s walk to a place 10 minutes away’, one of the best ice cream places. And I just remember how hard it was. We went to the gelataria, inside the shop, and it was still pretty hot and I was sweating. I remember they said to me not to sweat too much with my stitches, so I panicked a little bit, which just made me start to sweat more. I needed to sit down because I was so exhausted, I was really suffering. So I finished the ice cream, and then on the way back, I almost had to run home because I was so uncomfortable being outside. I just had to get home as soon as possible. I remember when I broke my wrist (at Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2023), I went to surgery, I was all high from the anesthesia and I was making jokes. Now it was completely different. I had to wait two days for the surgery, so there were two days of just laying in the bed, doing nothing. You just feel sorry for yourself. I had to be showered with the help of the team doctor. I could not shower. I was getting dizzy as soon as I stood or when I put my head down. I was just completely out of it and it was so tough. And then I was thinking, ‘After surgery, it’ll be fine.’ It took one hour and 40 minutes, a long time, and when I got out of anesthesia the doctor was trying to make some jokes, but I was not feeling it. I was really depressed after the surgery. For the first two weeks, I was really mentally not OK. I was really down. I was not a fun person to be around. I don’t think Urška was happy to see me around the house, because I was just, like, depressed. You know, just not feeling anything. When I started to get on the home trainer, to go to physio every day, then I started to feel better — also in the head. But it was a day-to-day fight. Some days I wanted to do everything: physio, gym, rollers, walk for two hours. You know, you have this energy. But then maybe the next day, I just wanted to do nothing all day. Because it’s not as visible as a collarbone, everybody forgets about it I think, people who have experienced it, or know somebody that has broken vertebrae, knows how serious it is. It was strange because it was not really painful in the position where it was broken, I was focusing more on the collarbone. But if I crash again on the bike now, it can be very problematic. Everybody says that I was lucky, and you’re always lucky after a crash where you can walk away and you’re fine. But the more you talk with people, the more you find out about the seriousness of the injury. You have the internet and you google it. You see it’s pretty serious and not to joke around. It’s a bit scary, to be honest, to think about it. These crashes always happen fast, I remember losing the handlebar with my right hand, so I was leaning forward and going over the handlebars. I was kind of on the bike still when I saw one yellow jersey from Visma, I think it was (Ben) Tulett, and I hit him and then we crashed. The next thing I remember was flying and hitting the floor really hard. I don’t remember hitting it with my head, or the first time that I tried to stand up, but I remember I couldn’t pick my arm up. I asked the doctor to pick it up for me. And then I just wanted to sit on the floor by the hard shoulder. I remember I tried to pick up the bike, but with my left hand I couldn’t hold anything. There’s not much I recollect from the ambulance, but I remember going to a nearby hospital, and that was quite the experience. They brought me a canister for peeing, and they said I needed to pee because I needed to be empty. I was like, for what? And then they left me behind the curtains for five minutes and I had to pee in the bed, which was quite an experience. After that I was just laying there and signing autographs for the doctors and nurses, taking some photos. I was kind of out of it, and they were cutting my skin suit from the back, taking small pieces of the jersey, and asking if I could sign these parts of the skin suit. So my skin suit now has a lot of holes cut into it which I gave to the staff. Urška was really flying at the end of the season, when I arrived back from Barcelona, she was really looking forward to the World Championships and the European Championships. Then, in Ardeche, she crashed again and re-broke her jaw. Luckily, I started feeling better that week, so when she arrived home, we could help each other. If it had happened one week earlier, it would have been terrible for both of us. She was able to get back onto the bike pretty fast, but there were some consequences with eating which was pretty tough. For the first four or five days when I was in hospital I had yellow recovery scores, but my heart-rate variability and heart rate were really terrible. Then, for the next four or five days, the recovery scores were all in the red. I was lying on the sofa all day doing nothing. I didn’t manage to hit green again for four weeks — it was only when I was able to get back to training and moving the body that it got back to normal. I was speaking to the team, speaking about whether it would be possible for me to ride the Europeans if everything went well and if I was in shape. They were only 10 kilometres from my parents’ house, I’d trained so much on these climbs, I knew every single part of the road. My whole family is from there. And if you win, you wear a beautiful jersey for the next season, you stand out, you’re a bit different. And plus, it also helps with recovery for the bones and from the concussion. If I didn’t have any goal, perhaps in my mind I could do two months of vacation and just do nothing, go for drinks, for nice dinners, and arrive in November and realise: ‘Oh s**t, maybe it was too good an off-season’, and the range of motion would not be as good as it is now. It was giving me motivation, and then we did another X-ray of the (bone) carbon. It hadn’t healed a lot in three weeks, and I could sense they were not happy to send me racing, so the motivation dropped a little bit. Brandon’s win gave me grey hairs, I was so nervous for the last two-and-a-half hours of the race. Isaac was just always so strong. I was hoping that he could destroy everybody, but then he was doing too much and luckily Brandon went on the move. It turned out to be the winning move, and I was just screaming at the television all the way to the finish line, sending energy to Canada. I hope it reached him, because I was really tired after watching the race, and so happy and emotional for him. I couldn’t be happier that it stayed in the team. I cannot wait to race with him next year. When I restarted riding outside we were in Slovenia, we did maybe three hours on the flat, then went walking, and saw lots of friends and family. Now, in Monaco, I go for runs, swum a few times — it’s important to build a really good base now through the winter. Actually, it’s not winter yet here — I was in shorts today riding outside. But I‘m feeling like I’m getting back into the proper rhythm of training and recovery. I noticed I was going a bit slower through the corners, taking more care in the dangerous areas, it was the first ride after broken collarbones for Eddie and Gladys, too, and I remember how bad all three of us were on the downhills. Gladys was the best of us, but Urska was always waiting for us at the bottom, and she was a bit like: ‘Come on guys.’ This year has been really crazy for me and Urska, we’ve been in hospital three times with broken bones, all quite bad ones, it’s the same for other people here (in Monaco), Eddie broke ribs in Paris-Nice, then he came here and got hit by a scooter and broke his ankle, now he’s got a broken collarbone. Then we have Bling (Michael Matthews, bronze medallist at this year’s Worlds), who broke pretty much everything in both his hands, and Matteo Trentin and Tim Wellens, who were both out with broken bones. I can’t even count all of these injuries on two hands, it’s crazy. But it’s normal in cycling, I think. I saw a video this year after my crash of Marc Marquez, the Moto GP rider, of how many times he crashed in his career and how many problems he has had. Then I was like, ‘OK, our sport is not that bad’, but at the same time, when you look at other sports, it is pretty bad. This year has again been a really, really bad year, these accidents are becoming more and more common. I saw some statistics that they most affect under-23 riders, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence, because the organization of the races is at an even lower level than the WorldTour. There is less safety protocol involved, fewer police officers, fewer people that take care of the road. Even if you compare the Tour de France to any other race on the calendar in the WorldTour, it’s such a big difference because in the Tour they put police officers almost on every corner, the signage is really good, and they clean the road very well. In other races, it’s just lacking this, no? The speeds are way faster, but the finishes are the same, and there are more speed bumps in the road than 10 years ago, which are designed to slow down traffic, not for racing over. Organizers can clean the road better, sign them better, and make the finishes less dangerous. They don’t need to be wide and straight on an eight-lane road like the Tour of Guangxi, but we need to avoid bad surfaces and corners in the last 500m, potholes, speed bumps, and roundabouts. There are a lot of things to do, but it’s definitely not measuring socks and how wide handlebars are from the UCI. It’s all these small details — and together, that’s a big job, but I think it should be necessary to put more thought into that." said Tadej Pogačar 🇸🇮(@TeamEmiratesUAE), @TheAthletic