The Clinic of the University of La Sabana reported this Tuesday through a statement that, after the neurosurgery performed, the INEOS team cyclist Egan Bernal continues to recover, is being given respiratory support and has been given fluid management to further your recovery.
The statement noted that the cyclist was extubated after noon “without any complications” and is, at this time, “conscious, with mobility in all four limbs.”
The current champion of the Giro d’Italia and the 2019 Tour de France collided this Monday at high speed with a bus on the Bogotá – Tunja highway, at the height of the municipality of Gachancipá, in the department of Cundinamarca, when the vehicle had parked According to traffic police reports.
This Monday, Bernal underwent “successful” surgery, according to the clinic, and after the procedure that was performed on the T3 to T8 vertebrae, “neurological integrity” was maintained and “the functionality of the involved segments” was preserved.
“We expect the best of the evolutions in this case. Once this is finished and we have the opinion of the surgeon, we will be giving a new report,” said Dr. Juan Guillermo Ortiz, general director of the Clínica Universidad de La Sabana, in a previous statement.
Egan Bernal’s accident
Egan’s accident occurred when he was training for a time trial and a passenger vehicle stopped to drop off a person. At that moment, Bernal crashes into that vehicle from the rear, according to what Colonel Castro Amórtegui, of Police Transit and Transportation, told Citizen Free Press.
“It was an accident,” said Colonel Castro Amórtegui emphatically, pointing out the causes of the accident. “We can’t say that the driver closed it” or that it was intentional.
According to him, the driver of the intermunicipal bus stopped at the berm, a strip authorized by the traffic code in which drivers can stop for any reason, including to drop off passengers, in the case of public service vehicles. He was not committing any infraction, according to Colonel Castro.
“The intermunicipal transport cars use it because this is an industrial zone with many companies and many families live there, so they stop to pick up and drop off passengers in the sector,” said the policeman.
The bicycle on which Bernal was riding was important in this accident, because due to its specifications, the cyclist’s body is (in an aerodynamic position) “and the view is towards the ground, so you have to be doing the exercise of looking straight ahead and look down,” the deputy director of Police Transit and Transportation told Citizen Free Press.
“In the first jump he makes, he may have his eyes straight ahead and see that the road is clear, he lowers his head. In that, a vehicle can pass on the left side, overtake it, park and he has in his head that it is not But when he looks up again, the car is already on top of him and that’s when he collides with it.”
“That can happen, because you don’t always have 100% sight on the road, but because of the conditions of the bicycle, that’s what can happen,” Colonel Castro told Citizen Free Press.