Tiesj Benoot, at his home in Belgium, wearing a neck brace, attending Het Nieuwsblad. /
The Belgian from the Jumbo-Visma recounts the accident he suffered this Monday in Livigno and highlights that “in Spain you drive with less stress”
Tiesj Benoot (Jumbo-Visma) suffered a serious accident this Monday while training in Livigno (Italy). Already in Belgium, he has received journalists from the newspaper Het Nieuwsblad to relate how the fall happened accompanied by a neck brace that he will have to wear for the next six weeks and also expresses that Spain is where bicycles are best ridden. “There are awareness campaigns.”
“I have ridden those roads for more than eight years and I have passed that one in particular more than a hundred times. It was descending at 67 kilometers per hour when a car pulled out onto the road from its parking space. He didn’t see me and I hit the side of his car. The door was dented, the rear view mirror was ripped off and the windows were broken. I went from 67 km/h to 0 in less than a second and was unconscious for fifteen minutes.
With a broken neck vertebra, the third-place finisher in this year’s Clásica de San Sebastián reports that “I was transferred by helicopter to a really bad hospital. The bed was very small and it was in a room for two people at thirty degrees. No one spoke English, the doctor never came and I waited thirty hours to get a proper neck brace. I had to leave that hospital on my own feet because I had no confidence in what they could do to me, ”Benoot describes the ordeal he suffered.
Already in Belgium they confirmed the breakage of another second vertebra, of the joint. He is aware that “I have been very lucky. I have heard many stories of people who have been worse off, and when they ask you if you are able to move your hands and toes, you realize what can happen to you ».
However, everything that happened in Italy was not bad, because Benoot wants to thank the help that his platoon mates gave him. «Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain) was in the area and he sent me a message to tell me to let him know if he needed me to bring something or if he could help me with the translations. Also Alberto Bettiol (Education First) and Michael Matthews (Bike Exchange) contacted me.
“We all have to do our part”
Benoot takes the opportunity to convey the dangers that cyclists, professionals and cyclists, suffer when going out on the road. “I know that I always take risks, but now I notice that people drive with more stress and that there is more frustration towards cyclists.” He admits that “this is understandable because the number of cyclists on the road has increased considerably and not all of them behave as they should, but to avoid accidents like this both cyclists and drivers have to do their part. Perhaps it’s better to be twenty seconds late for work than to haphazardly overtake a bicyclist or pedestrian. And as a cyclist I always think that I can not be seen by whoever is in the car.
Asked which roads and countries it is more comfortable to shoot on, he points out that «in Spain it is quite good. People drive a little more relaxed and there are also campaigns to remember that you have to keep a minimum distance of one and a half meters between the car and the cyclist ». Asked about the worst, he does not hesitate for a second: “Italy is the worst country to ride a bike, there is a lot of stress”.
