One of the reasons i like pro cycling is mature men do usually win important races. In a lot of sports i see a lot of forcing of young boys/men and only to get replaced soon by other young boys/men. If you are good in cycling, you can win a GT race at 35. You can be a father by then, can be fully developed as a person. Imagine Remco would win a GT race at 20. He would then need to win around 15 GTs in his career? That is just way over the top and in the end it is boring. Let this young guys mature and evolve gradually and if they are great cyclist, they will for sure win a lot of cycling races in their career.
Nobody has been forcing him to grow up unnecessarily. He’s the one that has been so good so far. 99.9999% are never good enough to win a GT and he was almost even money to win the Giro this year before the accident. His timeline was pushed up because he was so good that you couldn’t hold him back.
Hopefully the crash does not have any career threatening effects. Much better odds if surgery is not needed, but with this type of injury sometimes surgery comes about as there are residual issues (pain and paresthesia) that occurs that end up forcing surgery.
If it is merely a three month set back then it will be a miracle.
He’s best talent I’ve seen 40 years of watching cycling and I’m sure those who are older than me would say he invokes the same feelings as Merckx did or perhaps even stronger feelings.
Much harder to dominate today than it was 50+ years ago as the gap from being at the top to rider 250 is much much smaller.