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Pogačar Just Made Scary Revelations About the INVISIBLE Damage of His Crash — Transcript

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0:00Big crash. Big crash. Danny Pogacar is
0:02caught up in that red jersey.
0:05>> We don't see him often in the crashes,
0:07but he has hurt himself. He really went
0:10over the handlebar, landed on his head,
0:12on his face, and on his shoulder.
0:13>> Also on the eye, just above his eye
0:16there on the eyebrow, a lot of blood
0:18coming.
0:24>> Everyone saw the blood, the arm in a
0:27sling, the ambulance.
0:29Two months later, on the 31st of
0:31October, Tadej Pogacar sat down with
0:34Jacob Whitehead of The Athletic and told
0:36him what nobody had seen.
0:39It started with a scan he did in
0:40Slovenia in the middle of October.
0:43I knew I had a C7 fracture, but then we
0:46saw I had two more broken vertebrae, the
0:49T1 and T2. Three broken vertebrae, not
0:52one. And the two extra ones had gone
0:55unnoticed for almost seven weeks while
0:57he was already back on his bike.
1:00When he found out, his reaction was
1:02this.
1:03When I saw I had three broken vertebrae,
1:06I'm just happy to be alive actually or
1:08just to be standing.
1:11That's the best rider in the world
1:13talking. And the broken bones weren't
1:15even the worst of it because in the same
1:17interview, he admitted something about
1:19the weeks after the crash that he had
1:21never said out loud. For the first two
1:24weeks, I was really mentally not okay. I
1:27was really down. I was not a fun person
1:30to be around.
1:32So that's three kinds of damage that
1:34never showed up in a single photo. A
1:37brain that took weeks to settle, a spine
1:39that was more broken than anyone knew,
1:42and a mind that went dark.
1:44And to understand how a single fall did
1:46all of that, you have to see how fast it
1:49happened.
1:5029th of August, stage eight of the
1:53Vuelta, a flat day near Valencia.
1:56Pogacar is wearing the red jersey with
1:58almost four minutes everyone, chasing
2:01the only grand tour he has never won.
2:0433 kilometers from the finish on a wide,
2:07straight road, he reaches down for
2:09something every rider grabs a hundred
2:11times a
2:20>> Nothing could be more ordinary.
2:23And then his front wheel hits something
2:25on the road, a stone most likely, though
2:27even his team was never completely sure.
2:30The bike jerked sideways into a Visma
2:33rider, and on TNT Sports that evening,
2:35the pundits went through the replay
2:37frame by frame.
2:39>> And he didn't even have a chance to take
2:40his hands off the handlebars because he
2:42he went straight and did a front flip
2:44and hit his head and and and his
2:45shoulder. Um.
2:47>> That detail matters more than anything
2:49else in this story because his head took
2:52the first hit.
2:53UAE's team doctor, Adrian Rotunno,
2:56studied that crash afterwards, and he
2:59noticed something in Pogačar's wounds.
3:01>> He didn't even have time to to put his
3:03hands out
3:04properly.
3:05>> Normally, when you fall, your hands
3:07shoot out by reflex to protect you.
3:10Cyclists are usually good at it. They
3:12tuck and roll.
3:13Pogačar's cuts were on the wrong side of
3:16his hands.
3:17>> But he he landed basically on the back
3:19of his hands, so even that to get the
3:20hands out, that was the speed with which
3:23he he he he was catapulted.
3:25>> So his body never even got to protect
3:27itself.
3:28For the podcast, MET, the company that
3:31makes his helmet, brought in the actual
3:33helmet he was wearing that day.
3:35>> As you can see from that helmet, it it
3:37was a
3:38heavy left-sided impact.
3:40>> The whole left side, the head, the
3:43collarbone, the neck.
3:45And yet one rider who went down in that
3:47same crash, the Scottish climber Oscar
3:49Onley, got up almost [snorts] untouched.
3:52>> Um, I was really lucky actually. Um,
3:54hopefully today's okay cuz
3:57we were going really fast and uh it was
3:59quite scary.
4:00>> Lucky.
4:01Two months later, Pogačar used that same
4:03word about himself, and he didn't sound
4:06convinced.
4:08Everybody says that I was lucky, and
4:10you're always lucky after a crash where
4:12you can walk away and you're fine. But
4:15the more you talk with people, the more
4:17you find out about the seriousness of
4:19the injury.
4:20Walking away was exactly what fooled
4:22everybody starting on the side of that
4:25road.
4:26For a few seconds, he sat on the
4:28asphalt, blood running from a cut above
4:30his eye.
4:32On France TV, the commentators could see
4:34straight away how bad it looked.
4:44The eye and the shoulder, that's what
4:46everybody was looking at that night. And
4:49to be fair, it was hard to look anywhere
4:51else.
4:52But that was only the part a camera
4:53could film.
4:55And then Pogačar did what every champion
4:57does. He stood up and looked for his
4:59bike.
5:06His team was looking at the shoulder
5:08too. But in the TNT studio, one of the
5:11pundits was looking at something else.
5:13>> And I was a little bit concerned when he
5:15first went back on his bike.
5:16You know, that I I hope that they'd done
5:18the the concussion protocols. He He
5:20looked quite dizzy.
5:22>> That's a pundit watching on a screen in
5:24a studio, and he could already see it.
5:26The problem is that the rider himself
5:28usually can't.
5:30>> But
5:31in that in the in the heat of the
5:32moment, you know, the the the rider
5:35wants to grab the bike and get back on
5:36and
5:37>> With the red jersey on his back and the
5:39race moving on without him, of course he
5:41did. His directors asked him a few
5:43questions at the roadside, and that was
5:46enough. He wasn't safe to ride.
5:48He left in an ambulance, his arm in a
5:50makeshift sling.
5:52The next morning, Gianetti went to the
5:54hospital in Barcelona, and when French
5:56radio asked him how Pogačar was, the
5:59shoulder wasn't what worried him most.
6:07And that concussion was now in charge of
6:09everything, even the operation on his
6:11collarbone, which was broken and
6:13displaced and needed a plate as soon as
6:16possible.
6:25The surgeons were ready, but the brain
6:27had to be cleared first.
6:29Rotuno later explained why they made him
6:31wait.
6:32>> Whenever there's a sort of brain trauma,
6:35you know,
6:35whether it's it's visible or not.
6:38>> A general anesthetic on an injured brain
6:40is a real risk. So for two days, the
6:43doctors watched him for any sign of
6:45swelling or bleeding before they let
6:48anyone operate.
6:49Pogacar remembers those two days very
6:52differently.
6:53I had to wait two days for the surgery,
6:56so there were two days of just laying in
6:58the bed doing nothing. You just feel
7:01sorry for yourself.
7:02I had to be showered with the help of
7:04the team doctor. I could not shower. I
7:07was getting dizzy as soon as I stood or
7:10when I put my head down.
7:12A man who rides away from the whole
7:14world on the Tour malet and he couldn't
7:17stand in a shower without the room
7:18spinning.
7:20None of that shows on an X-ray and
7:22Rotuno says that's exactly what makes
7:24concussions so dangerous.
7:26>> And this can result then in in in in a
7:29non-visible
7:31neuronal or nerve injury in the brain.
7:34>> Your brain is a soft mass floating
7:36inside a hard skull.
7:38When the head stops dead or twists hard,
7:41the brain keeps moving and the nerve
7:43cells get stretched and torn
7:45and the normal tools can miss it
7:47completely.
7:48>> And you potentially get some some nerve
7:51injury that is not again not visible
7:53even sometimes on CT scans.
7:55>> So there's no cast, no stitches, nothing
7:58to show the sponsors and the person who
8:00has it is the worst judge of it.
8:02>> And if you are a rider yourself and you
8:04crash and you you concuss, you you have
8:06no idea that you concuss most of the
8:07time.
8:07>> No.
8:08>> In Pogacar's case, the nausea and the
8:10dizziness lasted long enough to throw
8:12off his coordination, and that's what
8:15kept him off the bike, even off the
8:17rollers at home.
8:18And Rotuno explains why you can't rush
8:21that part.
8:22>> After two, three days you might feel,
8:23you know, wonderful again and and uh and
8:25and want to get back on the bike.
8:27>> Which if you've ever watched Pogacar
8:29race sounds like a description of him.
8:32>> But the minute you do that, you know, it
8:34it could bring back that flurry of
8:35symptoms. So
8:36>> And sometimes the damage takes its time
8:38to show itself at all.
8:40>> We've seen athletes who have had
8:42extremely mild uh
8:44some head traumas and they've bled into
8:45their brain six weeks later.
8:47>> He's talking about other athletes, not
8:49Pogacar. But that's why nobody at UAE
8:52would put a date on his return. They
8:54followed the protocol to the letter, at
8:57least seven days without any symptoms
8:59before any real effort. Then memory,
9:02balance, and eye tests compared with his
9:04own scores from before the season.
9:07Because as Rotuno puts it, everybody
9:09starts from a different place.
9:11>> If I asked you to remember 10 words, you
9:13may remember all 10 and I would remember
9:15none, but that's my baseline.
9:17>> So Pogacar wasn't measured against
9:19anyone else, only against the Pogacar
9:21from before the season, the one who goes
9:24on to win everything.
9:25And for a while, he was nowhere near
9:28him.
9:29He said the turning point came when he
9:30could finally ride the home trainer and
9:32see the physio every day. When I started
9:35to get on the home trainer to go to
9:37physio every day, then I started to feel
9:40better, also in the head.
9:42But it was a day-to-day fight.
9:45That last part matters because for weeks
9:48the head was the real injury. The bones,
9:51everyone thought they knew.
9:53The first medical report listed a broken
9:55left collarbone and one stable fracture,
9:58the C7, the big vertebra at the base of
10:01the neck.
10:02And Rotuno says the collarbone actually
10:04did its job that day.
10:05>> And [snorts] fortunately for Tadej,
10:07there was no traction injury on the
10:09nerves and and uh and he remains
10:11completely neurologically intact in his
10:12left arm.
10:13>> When the shoulder is slammed one way and
10:16the neck the other, the collarbone snaps
10:18to protect the nerves that run from the
10:20neck into the arm. The bone broke, so
10:23the nerves didn't. On the Monday
10:25evening, the surgeon Xavier Mir, the man
10:28MotoGP riders trust with their
10:29shoulders, fixed it in Barcelona.
10:32Pogačar went home, got back on the bike
10:34at the end of September and started
10:36dreaming about one last race.
10:39I was speaking to the team, speaking
10:41about whether it would be possible for
10:43me to ride the Europeans. It was giving
10:45me motivation.
10:47The European Championships at home in
10:50Slovenia, that was the goal that got him
10:52through those weeks.
10:54But three weeks after the operation, an
10:56X-ray showed the collarbone had barely
10:59healed and he could sense the team
11:01wasn't happy about sending him to race.
11:03He let it go.
11:05And then in mid-October came that scan
11:07in Slovenia, the one he calls a funny
11:10story.
11:11There's actually a funny story. Two
11:13weeks ago, I was in Slovenia and I went
11:16to do another CT scan. I knew I had a C7
11:19fracture, but then we saw I had two more
11:22broken vertebrae, the T1 and T2.
11:25Only Pogačar could call that funny. The
11:28T1 and T2 sit right under the C7 where
11:32the neck turns into the upper back, the
11:34part of the spine that holds your head
11:36up when you're bent over the handlebars
11:37for 6 hours a day.
11:39He'd been training on them for weeks
11:41without knowing because they barely hurt
11:44and all his attention was on the
11:45collarbone. Even his team doctor on that
11:48podcast in September was still talking
11:51about a single fracture.
11:53Think about what would have happened at
11:54the Europeans with three broken
11:56vertebrae and one more crash.
11:59At that moment, I was happy I didn't do
12:01the European Championships, which had
12:03been my initial goal.
12:05He knows exactly how close it was and he
12:08knows a crash right now would not be
12:10like any other crash.
12:12But if I crash again on the bike now, it
12:14can be very problematic. It's a bit
12:17scary to be honest to think about it.
12:20That'0 something you expect to hear from
12:22the most fearless rider in the peloton.
12:24if you're wondering how his head came
12:26out of this without something much
12:28worse, Ritu no's answer was the helmet.
12:31>> And thankfully did its job in in you
12:34know preventing a I think what could
12:36have been a a far more severe head head
12:38trauma.
12:39>> But the part of the interview that
12:40surprised people most had nothing to do
12:42with bones.
12:44Remember the day after the crash when
12:46Pogacar posted a selfie from his
12:48hospital bed, neck brace, bandages, a
12:51big grin with the BG song Stay Alive as
12:54the caption.
12:55Fans loved it. It was exactly the
12:57picture everybody wanted to see. It just
13:00wasn't what was going on inside.
13:02Back in 2023 when he broke his wrist at
13:05Liege Bastogne Liege, Pogacar woke up
13:08from surgery cracking jokes. He told the
13:10athletic this time was nothing like it.
13:14I remember when I broke my wrist, I went
13:16to surgery, I was all high from the
13:18anesthesia and I was making jokes. Now
13:21it was completely different.
13:23When I got out of anesthesia, the doctor
13:26was trying to make some jokes, but I was
13:28not feeling it. I was really depressed
13:31after the surgery.
13:33That's a word you almost never hear from
13:35a rider at his level and he didn't
13:37soften it.
13:38On the night of the crash, one TNT
13:41pundit had already thought about the
13:42people at home before anything else.
13:45>> First and foremost for the lad himself
13:46because he hit the ground pretty hard.
13:48Urska and his family would be watching
13:49those pictures and wondering about his
13:51health and safety, his well-being.
13:53>> His partner, the Slovenian rider Urska
13:55Zigart watched it happen live like
13:58everyone else.
13:59But the hardest part for her came later
14:01when he was home and he didn't hide that
14:04either.
14:05I don't think Urska was happy to see me
14:07around the house because I was just like
14:10depressed, you know, just not feeling
14:12anything.
14:14Feeling nothing, feeling
14:17low and irritable. Those are well-known
14:19effects of a concussion, and they're the
14:22kind of damage no camera ever catches.
14:25He even told the paper that his recovery
14:27score, the daily number riders use to
14:29see how ready their body is, stayed
14:31yellow for his first four or five days
14:34in hospital, then dropped to red for the
14:36next four or five and took four weeks
14:39[music] to come back to green.
14:41Four weeks for the man with probably the
14:43best recovery numbers in the sport.
14:45[music]
14:46And the strange thing is back in July in
14:48Paris with his fifth yellow jersey on
14:51his shoulders, he had explained how you
14:53survive moments like that.
14:55The most important thing, he said, is
14:57having people around you that you trust.
15:00>> They help you and that
15:02they're there for you when you're you're
15:04on your lowest.
15:06>> He was talking about the tour back then.
15:08Six weeks later, he found out what his
15:10lowest really looked like, and the
15:12people around him were the ones living
15:14with it.
15:15Gianetti saw it in those first days in
15:17Barcelona.
15:26Understanding it was the hard part.
15:29The race he had in his hands, the world
15:31title he was going to defend in
15:33Montreal, the rest of his season, all
15:36gone in 1 second on a straight road. And
15:39on top of that, a brain that wouldn't
15:41let him feel much of anything about it.
15:44Here's the good news, and it comes from
15:46him.
15:48I don't have discomfort anymore. I have
15:50to be careful not to crash on the bike
15:52or do some heavy lifting with my left
15:54arm or with my neck, but I can do
15:57basically everything normal now.
16:00He's running in Monaco, swimming, riding
16:02outside in shorts at the end of October,
16:05building his base for the winter. But
16:07listen to the one condition in there. Be
16:10careful not to crash. That's the one
16:13thing his job is guaranteed to put him
16:15through. And concussion has a memory.
16:18>> You do
16:18>> that once, twice, three times, that can
16:20then sort of snowball into into severe
16:23post-traumatic concussion syndrome.
16:25>> He's careful to say that almost everyone
16:28recovers fully when it's managed well,
16:30and Pogačar's case was managed by the
16:32book.
16:33But it's a reminder that the fastest
16:36rider in the world is made of the same
16:37fragile stuff as everyone else. And on
16:40the night of the crash, a TNT pundit
16:43said it better than anyone.
16:44>> With the greatness and the bike handling
16:46skills and the good fortune of Tadej
16:48Pogačar, he is not immune to these kinds
16:52of perils like everyone else.
16:53>> And now he knows it from the inside.
16:56He told The Athletic he'll probably
16:58start 2027 with the Classics and the UAE
17:01Tour, and then of course the Tour de
17:03France, where a sixth win would put him
17:05alone in the record books. The final
17:08plan comes in December.
17:10As for whether this crash changed him,
17:12he didn't pretend to know.
17:14There's no hiding in this, I think, so
17:17we will see.
17:18We'll find out the first time he goes
17:20down a mountain at 100 km an hour or
17:23reaches for a bottle in the middle of a
17:25nervous peloton, because the scars on
17:28his shoulder will fade, but the damage
17:30that mattered most was never the kind
17:32you could see.
17:34If you want more stories about what
17:35really happens to riders [music] after
17:37the cameras move on, subscribe.
17:40And tell me in the comments, do you
17:42think Pogačar will race exactly the same
17:44way in 2027?

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