Sergio Román Martín, a cyclist at the Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo: “I’d rather be in a wheelchair than with a bouquet of flowers on top”

A year and a half passed from that day, ecstatic in the Tour of Great Britain, when on the way to Llandudno, Welsh lands, Sergio was left hand in hand with Van Aert and Alaphillipe, the photo of a life. I ended up on a hard hill, then I burst and finished eighth or ninth in the stage. But there was a time when the three of us were there…, he recalls with that liquid blue look that impacts under the spring sun. He tells it with amazing serenity sitting in his wheelchair, which he already handles with ease. He has finished his daily physiotherapy session and is waiting for lunch. He receives EL MUNDO at the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo. This is the most difficult race of my life, he pronounces.

On April 7, an oversight, a car perhaps poorly marked, a cruel wink of fate, disrupted the existence of a 26-year-old boy when he arrived home, in Galapagar, after one of many training sessions. Because Sergio Romn Martn, surname of a bullfighter, was, is, a cyclist, a professional in the Caja Rural, with whom he competed in the 2021 Vuelta, with whom he had competed 19 days in a month this 2023, with whom he was going to run the Itzulia and so many dreams fulfilled and to be fulfilled. Now I cannot see the cycling that I should be in, I am not capable, I feel that I still belong, he recounts. In that accident he broke two vertebrae and gave up his marrow. They operated on him urgently at the Hospital 12 de Octubre after being taken by helicopter and, 16 days later, he was admitted to Toledo, his new platoon. I neither feel nor have the ability to move everything below the marrow. Maybe in the future there will be a chance to recover. We don’t know, only time will tell. It’s hard for him to walk again, he admits without a trace of self-pity.

It was a routine training session, two hours on the time trial bike. He wanted to do the Spanish time trial championship, in the Madrid area. He wanted to do it right. It’s not that I’m a specialist, but I defend myself. I was going along a normal shoulder, two meters, a straight road. I was engaged for 15-20 seconds, looking down, deep in, focused, doing a set. There was a road maintenance van on the shoulder. It was not very well marked. I slammed into her. Direct, frontal, remember harshly. I woke up on the floor. Ah, it was the first moment in which I didn’t feel my legs. The call to her mother, the intuition of the drama: I told her: ‘Mom, I fell, I’m fine’. I don’t even know how I unlocked the phone. That was done by my subconscious.

Sergio speaks openly about his new reality, also about what could have been. He still wears a collar, although he has already regained a lot of stability and strength in his upper body. The marks of the sun still shine on his arms. In the physical therapy session, he clenches his jaw with effort and asks a lot. He is one more in the immense pavilion of the Hospital for Paraplegics, where dozens of inmates are cared for on stretchers, bars, mats… He is a great patient, but we cannot run. That’s not what it’s about now, he admits Carlos Aparicio, his physio. I have some medical aspects that I have to cure first. I am used to a level of intensity and work 100 times higher than this. Here I have come and my life has stopped. I always want to run more, ask, think about the next step. And they have to stop me. They do it from prudence, so that there is no problem that could complicate things in the long term, he says: They are like small training sessions, my series are now this. It’s what I usually think.

The long term is the activation of the marrow. “It is possible that as soon as the inflammation goes down there will be more connection and it is more likely that I can recover. First move a toe, then a foot, then the other… But it does not depend on me or anyone, neither the doctors nor rehabilitation. When it has to happen, it will happen. If it happens…”, he warns.

Bernal’s message

The day to day, emotionally, in general, well. I consider myself optimistic, cheerful and active. I know there are worse times. It is part of the process. It is a complicated situation, continues Sergio, who somewhat regrets the devastating Instagram post he wrote a few days ago: Those legs that have given me so much joy on the bike, that I have felt burning for giving everything in La Vuelta, are not there. They don’t move, they don’t feel cold or hot…. I wrote it because I wanted to show reality. There are many people who are not aware of the situation, of what an injury is, he points out.

What bothers Sergio the most, who receives visitors daily, who is moved by the messages of support that he receives -stresses the one from Egan Bernalwho suffered a similar accident, and that of Alejandro Valverde-, is that he cannot fend for himself. They lift me up, because I am not capable. I am learning. Breakfast. I do the activities. Physio and occupational therapy, to learn to handle myself on a day-to-day basis. Like, they knock me down again. I don’t have the ability to choose what to do. I can’t get up or go to bed whenever I want. That’s hard, she says.

He confesses that he has cried. Although never until this Monday had she done it in front of anyone. That luxury is not allowed – my family is having a hard time, I have to pull them, it is a responsibility. But it’s just mentioning his bike and Sergio succumbs to emotion. I miss her so much… I can’t be mad at her… Sorry, this is going to cost me from her. Give me a minute… Damn, in the end the bike is what I like the most in life. It’s not easy.

The bike and Sergio, since at the age of six his parents signed him and his brother up for the Galapagar club, because they knew the monitor. We made a good group, we had a good time. That was the key, he recalls. And then the victories. I began to realize that I was good at it. And at the age of 15 I already glimpsed that I could be a professional, when I saw Froome, his fraud, win Tours. And then be able to share a squad with him. And with Valverde, Purito, Nairo… I have fulfilled my dream, in that I have been lucky. It wasn’t easy. Now, due to a misfortune, an accident, my life has stopped. It’s hard to go back to before. I try to think about it little and focus on the things I can control. Because what I can’t do is go back. I have to go forward and I can do it sunk or as lively as possible, he was honest, in a brutal exercise in honesty: I could have realized it a second earlier and reacted. Or it could be worse and be quadriplegic and not even move his hands. Or have killed me. He has touched me amy ya est. I’m alive, at least. Might not be. I’d rather be in a wheelchair than with a bouquet of flowers and a stone on top.

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