Cycling
Add news
News

‘I broke two ribs & punctured lung but hid pain so I didn’t frighten my kids,’ says Tour de France legend Mark Cavendish

0 14

SMASHING to the floor on the “wall of death” track, cycling hero Mark Cavendish knew he was badly injured.

Yet despite the searing pain from injuries that would land him in intensive care, he also knew there was one thing he had to do.

Instagram @markcavendish
After smashing to the floor on the ‘wall of death’ track, cycling hero Mark Cavendish knew he ‘was in a bad way’ but stood up and smiled[/caption]
Avalon.red
Despite the searing pain, Mark reveals his instinct ‘was to stand up so they’d know I’m OK’ as his wife Peta Tod and their four children were watching[/caption]

Stand up and smile — because his wife, Fabulous contributor Peta Todd, 34, and their four children, Finn, 15, Delilah, nine, Frey, six, and Casper, three, were there watching as he and a competitor crashed out in the final race of the Ghent Six Day event in Belgium on Sunday.

In an exclusive interview with The Sun shortly after he was released from the ICU on Thursday, Mark, 36, explains: “When I crashed I knew I’d done some damage and was in a bad way, that scares you.

“But the kids were there and my instinct was to stand up so they’d know I’m OK.

“I walked back to the cabins we stay in at the velodrome and when they’d gone I was stretchered off to hospital.”

Mark, known as the Manx Missile because of his Isle of Man roots, suffered two broken ribs and a punctured lung.

He recalls: “It was a freak accident caused by water on the track after a rider spilled his drink.

“There was a slip of wheels in front which started a chain reaction and caused the crash. I landed on a bike, broke my ribs and ripped a hole in my lung.

“The hole is behind my heart, which complicates things and makes it harder to monitor, because it doesn’t show on X-rays, but I’ll survive.”

More than that, Mark is raring to go again and insists he will be back on his bike by January, when the new racing season begins.

‘Mental health problems are real’

He says: “As professional sportspeople you know your body well enough to know what it means and what the recovery time is.

“We’re used to broken bones and lungs heal quite quickly, so I should be back in the saddle in a few weeks.

“It might push my season back a bit, and I’ll be in pain for a while, but I heal well so it’s not too bad.”

Mark’s resilience is characteristic of his nature — and perhaps a result of going through much worse in the last few years.

A freak virus, a shoulder fracture and crippling depression left him in the pits of despair and fearing his career was over for good.

He had hit a professional high in 2016, when he added another four stage wins in the Tour de France, claimed his third title at the UCI Track Cycling Championships and won silver at the Rio Olympics.

But a year later, the superfit athlete found himself barely able to climb the stairs. “I was still training but I was overwhelmed with fatigue,” he says.

“I started not being able to walk up the stairs or play with the kids and I knew something was wrong, so I got a blood test.”

He was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus, which lives in 90 per cent of us and can cause glandular fever, often in teenagers, but rarely in adults.

Mark explains: “It’s a coward disease, so when you’re rundown physically or mentally, or in stress, it can flare back up again.

“It stays dormant until it has an easy way to come back. I had a big year the year before, and I was just over the limit.”

After a rest, he was given the all-clear to return to the sport but, after crashing out of the 2017 Tour de France and fracturing a shoulder, he suffered a relapse and now believes he should have been given more time to recover.

When he returned in 2019, his cycling team, Dimension Data, dropped him from their Tour de France line-up, which led to him leaving.

Throughout this ordeal Mark was also suffering clinical depression, a condition he admits he would have dismissed as a younger man, telling sufferers to “snap out of it”.

He says: “There’s almost a karma that somebody like me gets depression and that’s why I’m not afraid to talk about it. Depression is not about feeling sorry for yourself because things aren’t going your way, it’s a medical condition that you can’t control.

Depression is not about feeling sorry for yourself because things aren’t going your way, it’s a medical condition that you can’t control.

Mark Cavendish

“I changed. I just wasn’t me. I was numb, with no empathy or feeling towards anybody or anything.

“It’s hard to describe because it can be nothingness and it can be absolutely everything.

“But after saying it was all nonsense before, I can now say, from personal experience, mental health problems are real and have to be taken seriously.”

Dropped by another team, Bahrain-McLaren, after the 2020 season, Mark began 2021 fearing he would have to retire. But he managed to strike a deal with one of his former teams, Deceuninck-Quick-Step.

Then an injury to team-mate Sam Bennett meant he was included in their Tour de France squad, setting the scene for one of the greatest comebacks in sporting history. Mark miraculously went on to win four stages of the iconic road race, equalling Eddy Merckx’s 1975 record of 34 stage wins overall.

He also bagged the coveted Green Jersey — known as the sprinter’s jersey — and was hailed “the greatest sprinter in the history of the Tour and of cycling” by race director Christian Prudhomme. He says: “Being able to win again was beautiful. That race is what I live for. I’m fortunate to have been able to go back and make the most of it.”

Mark writes about his incredible journey back to the top of his sport in new book Tour De Force, in which he is refreshingly honest about the emotional toll it took. He recounts breaking down in his hotel room after winning his first 2021 Tour de France stage, adding: “I might have been there for ten minutes, it could’ve been half an hour or an hour, I don’t know. I just couldn’t stop crying.”

Reflecting now, he says it was four years of pent-up emotion flowing out after his battle to get back to the top. “I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad, I was overwhelmed,” he says.

‘My goal is to win as much as I can’

“I’ve always thought it’s better to wear your heart on your sleeve, then people know what they’re getting from you. You don’t have to pretend to be someone else to anyone and experience has now taught me that if you’re not all right, you have to say so.

“There’s not always something people can do about it. Just being able to open up about it is often enough to help.” Mark credits the support of wife Peta, who he married in 2013, with getting him through the dark times and has dedicated his book to her “love and unwavering belief”.

He says: “It was exceptionally hard for Peta and the kids but at the time you don’t know and it doesn’t matter. It put a massive strain on our family and, unfortunately, it still has its consequences now. But Peta was so strong and helped me through it.

“Depression changes your life and you’re never the same again. But you can move forward, you can deal with things, you can turn things positive — and it all came right this year.” Last weekend’s race at Ghent’s 166m velodrome — shorter and steeper than the Olympic standard 250m — was meant to put the cherry on the cake of a year Mark has described as a fairytale.

However, he admitted he was petrified of riding on the track, which he said was like being on a “wall of death”, and where he had crashed two years ago. But with typical determination, Mark is determined to plough through the latest setback and has no plans to retire soon.

He has his eyes firmly set on next year’s Tour de France, although he bats off questions about breaking the Merckx record before he retires. He says: “My goal is to try to win as much as I can, for as long as I can. There’s no specific number I want to reach.” When he does retire, he says, it will be time to put the family first after many years of training abroad for weeks on end.

My family have been on the back end of my career for too long so first and foremost, I’ll do what’s best for them.

Mark Cavendish

“My family have been on the back end of my career for too long so first and foremost, I’ll do what’s best for them,” he says.

“But I have options and I have desires when it comes to what I do next. I’m not lucky to be a cyclist, because I have worked hard and sacrificed my whole life. But every day I’m on a bike, I feel fortunate to be able to do what I love and I’m fortunate that I’m in a position that I can choose what I want to do after in my career.”

When Mark was at rock bottom, he says colleagues and friends lost faith in him — but he never doubted himself. “People who were with me went away while I was trying to find my way back,” he says.

“But I knew what I could do, I knew where I was before and what I needed to do to get back there.

“I didn’t know how long it would take — maybe a year, maybe ten years — but I always knew that I had the dogged persistence and the work ethic to come back to the top.”

It is that persistence that will keep him coming back — again and again.

  • Tour De Force: My History-making Tour De France by Mark Cavendish (Ebury Spotlight) is out now, £20.
AFP
Mark says ‘I walked back to the cabins we stay in at the velodrome and when they’d gone I was stretchered off to hospital’[/caption]
The cyclist, known as the Manx Missile because of his Isle of Man roots, suffered two broken ribs and a punctured lung
Stewart Williams
He insists he will be back on his bike by January, when the new racing season begins[/caption]

We pay for your stories!

Do you have a story for The Sun news desk?

Email us at exclusive@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4104. You can WhatsApp us on 07423 720 250. We pay for videos too.

Click here to upload yours.

Click here to get The Sun newspaper delivered for FREE for the next six weeks.

Загрузка...

Comments

Комментарии для сайта Cackle
Загрузка...

More news:

Washington Area Bicyclist Association
Ontario Cycling Association

Read on Sportsweek.org:

Podium Cafe
Podium Cafe
Podium Cafe
Podium Cafe
Sick Lines

Other sports

Sponsored