I feel the urge to intervene in the debate regarding Jonas' latest injury and various estimates on recovery time.
I am even more reserved about commenting on Jonas' condition after the P-N crash than post last year's Itzulia's many severe physical consequences for Jonas.
As an analogy, I would like to share a personal story.
In January 2023, my wife had a concussion that knocked her out a bit, but still continued the next day in her running club and the following day entered a long-awaited party with her old school friends. Similar to Jonas continuing his ride to the finish line during the fateful stage of this year's P-N.
3 am in the night, 69 hours after her indident, she woke up and wanted to be transported to the hospital, and she was not used to being like that. 20 difficult months passed, where she had to withdraw from everything, reduce her working hours, leave everything at home before she could do anything again, but then 1 month later she had a small concussion again here in November '24, and now it is not just back to zero, but worse than post effects of her first concussion. so I've had to take her out of the equation with pretty much everything on the family front and just stand under the waterfall and hope that the day comes when she's fully recovered.
When it comes to the skull and the gray matter that hides behind it, pro riders are not superhumans here.
The long time side effects of a concussion can be far more complex than a lung puncture/collapse.
Regarding Pogi's crash in Strade, I actually didn't think so much of a direct concussion as I thought maybe a misalignment of the neck.
If I have to come up with yet a personal anecdote, I had a crash on my bike over a decade ago, a person stepped out onto the bike lane without orienting himself. I fell heavily head first, halfway into the person, halfway down into the asphalt, but my helmet took most of it. Coincidently it happened to be a young medical student who wanted to check me and see if I was OK. I was irritated and had to rush to an important morning meeting. But when the meeting started, I felt nauseous and the world spun around for me.
I went to the doctor, who couldn't find anything related to a concussion. I did get a general health check-up, as I was set for participating in the La Marmotte bike race 3 weeks later (no DNS, was accomplished successfully
).
But 2½ years of sudden migraine attacks had to pass before I found the right chiropractor. She could immediately say that my head was "loosely sitting on top of my body". And just the first real crack in my neck by her and it felt like 10 elephants were being removed from my shoulders, besides like a tunnel vision that instantly disappeared; suddenly felt like I could see the world around me with much broader FOV. This after having consultet another chiropractor of whom had also twisted my head around. But it was not only the upper cervical vertebrae but also one of the upper spinal vertebrae.
This is just to nuance the debate a bit regarding injuries and when it comes to the substance between the ears, it can get really hairy.
Of course, I hope that it is not career-changing in the same ways that it has been for other riders.
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