Egan Bernal has indicated that he will travel to Europe in ten days’ time to resume his season, though he has yet to decide where he will next pin on a race number.
The Colombian started his campaign with encouraging displays in the mountains at the Vuelta a San Juan, but he was forced to abandon the race abruptly on the penultimate stage due to pain in his left knee.
After skipping the following week’s Colombian Championships, Bernal sat out the Vuelta a Andalucía, and Ineos later confirmed that he would not line out at Paris-Nice as initially planned.
Bernal sounded an upbeat note in an interview with the Just Cycling channel in Colombia this week, however, confirming that he had resumed training after the injury.
“I’m super happy and the knee has improved from one day to the next,” Bernal said. “I’m already training very hard. I really needed it.
“I will be here in Colombia for ten days and then I will travel to Europe and see what races there are, depending on the form I have lost. I can go there and measure myself to gain confidence again.”
Ineos reported that Bernal had sustained the injury in a crash on the opening stage of the Vuelta a San Juan, with the pain then exacerbated by his efforts in the mountains later in the week. A day after finishing fourth atop Alto Colorado, he stepped off the bike barely ten miles into stage 6.
Bernal told Just Cycling that a series of scans had not shown any lasting injury to his left knee. He previously fractured the right femur and patella in the life-threatening training crash he suffered in January 2022, and the doctor who operated on him then was among those to assess his latest injury.
“Obviously I have a lot of faith in him,” Bernal said. “He thought it was tendinitis resulting from the fall I had in Argentina. In any case, it was the other knee that hurt. The knee I hurt in the accident [last year] is better.”
When Bernal first resumed riding on the turbo trainer, he was still afflicted by knee pain. “But then half an hour passed, and the pain disappeared, it was as if the knee needed to loosen up or warm up,” said Bernal, who has since resumed training on the road.
La Gazzetta dello Sport has reported that Bernal is targeting a return to competition at the end of March, either at the Volta a Catalunya or the Settimana Coppi e Bartali.
At the start of the season, Bernal also signalled his intention to return to the Tour de France, though Ineos deputy manager Rod Ellingworth told Cyclingnews last month that the team was not putting “any expectations” on the Colombian, with his compatriot Daniel Martínez currently in line to lead their challenge in July.
"Rod told me, ‘If you need to stop for a week or two, you can be calm about it, because the season is long,’” Bernal said. “There’s still a lot of training to do for the Tour, the Vuelta and Il Lombardia, and the team has confidence in the fact that I am very professional.”
