Lying contorted, bleeding, shivering on a Flemish footpath, I was already thinking about that next big race - Brodie Chapman's Tour de France Femmes column

Australian pro Brodie Chapman rides for UAE Team L'IMAD and is currently building up for the Tour de France Femmes, her second appearance in the race after making her debut in 2025. To get there this year, Chapman has not had the easiest of runs: she went down hard in the Tour of Flanders in April, fracturing her pelvis and ending her spring prematurely, facing a tough recovery to get back for the Tour.

In the first of three columns she will be penning before, during and after the Tour de France Femmes, Chapman writes about that injury, coming back from it, and her hopes for the Tour.

The moment you hit the ground as a result of a big crash feels like it occurs in both a split second and light years. After the preliminary self-assessment (I am conscious, my toes move, people are here to help), the very next, desperate thought is often 'What's my next race and can I be there?'

Despite the pain, the adrenaline invites an immediate resolve – making it back for that next big race that you are targeting has to be achievable. All the while you are lying contorted, bleeding, shivering on an unremarkable footpath in Flemish Belgium.

In my head, the recovery process starts the moment you are being strapped into a stretcher. My stream of thoughts is like OK, hospital, painkillers, discomfort, confusion, questions, no answers, conflicting answers, transport, how do I get home, panic, delusional optimism, despair, goal setting… Indeed, the steady drip of morphine helps with the calm, but it's commonplace for athletes to stubbornly plan towards goals and dreams even in a state of incapacitation, and I am certainly no exception.

It was concluded I had sustained a pelvic fracture in my left iliac crest, and also fractured the bridge of my nose after crashing at the Tour of Flanders in April. These diagnoses were frustratingly overlooked for the first few days, and despite being reassured (gaslit?) that pain after crashing was to be expected, and I needed not overthink (a tale as old as time), my deep pain and immobility were clear enough signs that this was not simply a bruise.

Once I was repatriated from Belgium (via airport wheelchair) into Spain (airport buggy), then Andorra (just crutches), I more or less became a redundant human, let alone an athlete. At the same time, my partner made sure to keep me comfortable and take on all the household tasks.

The recovery process

Within 24 hours of crashing, my name had been slashed from the Giro d'Italia team, and it was then I launched into quiet Tour de France Femmes planning, but kept it to myself until I had at least tentatively lifted a leg over my bike fixed to the stationary trainer. I am not one to push through pain unnecessarily, nor did I feel I needed to play catch-up, but I knew getting moving with a non-weight-bearing exercise would help as long as I didn't hinder my recovery.

Someone once told me to treat my recovery from an injury with the same respect, planning and consistent discipline as I treat my training. Proper training can wait; the goal now is to allow my bone to heal. Days entailed long but disrupted sleep, breakfast, ergo, MyWhoosh for 30 minutes, lunch, watch cycling, watch some Netflix junk, family calls, ergo again for an hour, drive to my physios in Andorra la Vella, magnets and Tecar machines, needles and massage, drive back.

By the end of April, I could shakily stand, but I couldn't yet walk. From the couch I watched my team racing in the Ardennes, winning at La Vuelta Femenina, attacking the Giro d'Italia. My team inspires me, and I was brewing some fervent motivation while I watched my little MyWhoosh avatar, complete with a team jersey, pedal steadily through virtual worlds.

And so it goes; the weeks merge into a blur, absent of the threat of a fading of identity or loss of purpose like I once felt in my early days of cycling through injury. My UAE team doctors and physios were in daily contact with me; I felt confident and reassured that I could return to play soon enough.

The start of a comeback

The Tour de Suisse was always on my calendar, and I was eager to arrive at the race fit and ready. After doing a local gravel race in Spain the week before, my confidence was stifled a bit as I experienced debilitating lower back pain and faded into the minor placings quite early on, but I kept to my rehab, changed my bike setup to adapt to my lopsided hips, and set off to Switzerland.

Switzerland is also where the Grand Départ for the Tour de France Femmes will be, and although I was a few rungs down on the reserve list, I held it in my mind's eye that I still had a chance to make the team for the big race in France.

I was ecstatic to be back with my teammates, and although Suisse wasn't my best performance, I could still contribute strongly to the team goals. I executed an OK time trial despite having been involved in a crash the day before. I hit the ground hard on the same hip I had broken and had a mild tantrum in the moment. Thankfully, my teammate Maëva Squiban was there, unscathed, to calm me down and guide me back to the front of the race where I was immediately put to work controlling a breakaway for 100km or so.

Again, the crash was a fleeting moment but whole dialogues unfolded in my mind, about the future, about injury, and if the Tour de France Femmes was still part of my trajectory.

As the cliché goes, recovery isn't linear, even though at some point amongst the steady rise back to form and all the rehab admin, you are just ready for it to be 'over' and for your body and form to be back to normal. Although I was very, very fit, thanks to the longest endurance block I have been allowed in years, I was still struggling a bit with fast descending, my nervous system unconsciously fearful of hitting the ground again. This bruises the ego and incites rumination about your abilities. Can I still be the athlete I was? Can I possibly be better?

Making it to the Tour

Then I received a phone call from my DS. I was selected to be part of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes team. I felt like I had to salute, stand for duty in my living room and dial up my preparation with immediate effect. The very next week, I was off on a recon weekender with two other Women's WorldTour riders, Tota Magalhães from Movistar and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney from Canyon-SRAM and their partners. We set off to tackle the mythical Mont Ventoux, home to the Queen stage of this year's Tour de France Femmes and a monstrous undertaking for anyone on a bike.

Although the three of us have very different roles and capabilities, it was still fun to discuss over coffee how we saw the race playing out, and it was quite cool to see the finesse and speed 2024 winner Kasia delivered as she ascended Mont Ventoux. It will certainly be a showdown for the ages.

The Tour de France is without doubt the most hotly contested stage race in our calendar. Every single rider on the start line has done the most to show up in their season-best form; we have all worked hard high at various summer ski resorts through July to ensure no stone is left unturned.

My team, UAE Team L'IMAD, retreated to the familiar jagged mountains and snaking roads of Passo San Pellegrino in the Dolomites to fine-tune our preparation. Located on a quiet dead-end road at 1,800m elevation, we were fuelled with home-cooked Italian cuisine and supported by a network of physios, coaches, nutritionists and, of course, thrived off one another. We suffered together – but I will say, I believe I suffered a bit more, climbing mountains, in the wake of the GC riders.

Behind the scenes, while we riders lay on the massage tables or relaxed in our beds after a hard day on the pedals, the whole team is in full planning mode. There is equipment to be considered (which model of Colnago for which days? Which gearing do you want?), the logistics of riders arriving from all over Europe, health management, strategic considerations. Our DS and aerodynamic specialist are in France doing recons of all the stages. The coaches are monitoring our load and preparing reports for the performance team, the materials staff are allocating new kit, the chef is preparing a menu for the Tour, the media team is scheduling interviews and photoshoots.

Our job now is to respect the balance between work and rest, do our homework and learn the demands of each stage, take notes from VeloViewer and count down the days to the start in Lausanne.

I feel ready, hungry, excited and nervous all at once. I expect fast, aggressive racing and a spectrum of emotions as each stage passes. We are all there to win.

Stay tuned for my next column as the race unfolds.