Taco van der Hoorn has outlined the frustration and long recovery process as he continues his fight back to health from a concussion suffered back in April.
The Dutchman crashed hard at the Tour of Flanders and hasn't raced since after being hit by a heavy concussion. Seven months on, he's still in the rehabilitation process and is still waiting to get back to 100%.
Speaking to WielerFlits, the Intermarché-Circus-Wanty rider said that "things are going OK" but noted that he still has good and bad periods.
"Things are going OK considering the circumstances, but the circumstances are not very good at the moment," he said. "My head is still bothering me. I'm making progress but it's often three steps forward and then two back."
"Good periods alternate with bad. That's sometimes very frustrating. You'd like to ride again and be part of the peloton again. But that doesn't work out."
Van der Hoorn was one of several Intermarché riders to crash out of the Tour of Flanders on a nightmare race day for the team that also saw leader Biniam Girmay suffer a concussion.
But while the Eritrean star recovered relatively quickly and got back to racing by the summer, Van der Hoorn's battle back to health has been a long and challenging one. He told WielerFlits that the uncertainty about the future only adds to the frustration.
"And it's also that you have a headache every day. Of course, that's not fun," he added. "It also caused my concussion to bother me in everyday life – that I had to stay at home a lot and couldn't actually do much."
"There was no reading a book, no going out with friends, no watching TV, no being with people because it was too busy. Then there isn't much left, of course. And then the days are very long."
"Fortunately, everything is going well again. Daily life is quite manageable. I was also able to do some work on aero testing and material development. I was also able to meet up with friends more often, which helped me get through it."
Van der Hoorn is a rider who loves getting in a breakaway and going on the attack, having taken the biggest win of his career on stage 3 of the 2021 Giro d'Italia with a late solo move.
He's still some way away from being able to replicate the exertions of racing, however, he said.
"The last thing that is still not going very well is exertion. My doctors are confident that this will heal completely again. That's because everything else has also fully recovered, the factors I was suffering from. But when the bit of exertion is healed, the doctors have a hard time telling me."
"It could still be a few weeks, but just as easily a few months. The uncertainty is not the most fun to have. This injury just doesn't allow itself to be predicted. That's tricky because – unlike a fracture or something – there is no end date."
Van der Hoorn, who previously suffered a concussion in late 2017 that took him out of the bulk of the 2018 season, said that he's working with a rehab psychologist as part of his efforts to recover and get back to racing.
He said that he's confident he'll be able to quickly get back to his racing level once he's able to train normally again.
"Once my head is good and if I can train for an hour with more intensity, then complaint-free training is also close," he said. "Then again, I feel that by training hard, I will be back to my highest level within two months. I have every confidence in that."
"That also went very well in 2018 and that has given me a lot of peace of mind since then – that after such a long period of inactivity, you can still be there fully again. Before 2018, I had trouble taking rest, even after the season. That I would then lose all my training investment. But I'm not afraid of that now."
