Tao Geoghegan Hart says his job these days depends on an ability to be patient, as he continues a long recovery from a complex fracture to his left femur suffered in a crash on stage 11 of the Giro d'Italia. His day-to-day activities are “pottering around” as he works on just getting his range of motion back in his leg.
Physiotherapy is his focus, and he is eager to just get on a bike, any bike, rather than a wheelchair to go outside. He spoke on Wednesday on a webcast session with travel company inGAMBA about the positive, but slow, rehabilitation process from his current residence in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He keeps an eye on the Tour de France, calling it “a unique beast” and looked well ahead to where he might want to ride a bike next year.
“It's not that I've been able to do a great deal in the last weeks, to be honest, with the mobility around the leg and stuff, I have to be careful of not overdoing it. I've got my Brompton folded up in the boot of my car, which I'm itching to get out to kind of explore the city a little bit more in the coming weeks. And for now, just doing what I can and enjoying pottering around really and yeah, trying to recover from the rehab because it's pretty arduous,” Geoghegan Hart said during the inGAMBA.pro question-and-answer session.
“During my rehab here in the Netherlands, one of the important things to me was to be in a city because I think there's just such a great diversity of people and culture and galleries and opportunities to just spend one time. So that was a unique opportunity to fill this period where possible with doing some other things, outside of the three to four hours a day of rehab and physio.”
The Briton had surgery the evening of the crash in May in Genova. Eight weeks on, he’s in the gym now with some weight resistance but is not able to go outside for recovery sessions, which he said is the most difficult part of the process so far.
“Yeah, it is all inside, which is hard for me because I love being outside. And it's definitely one of the things that drew me to cycling, being outside all day,” Geoghegan Hart explained. “It's mostly with the physio, so a lot of passive stuff, still getting range motion, and the full movement patterns and stuff.
“Started in the gym properly, I would say, last week. I was pretty sore in the days after that, and much more sore than you'll ever get from riding the bike,” he said with a chuckle. “It's all progressing well. It’s just about being patient. And yeah, Rome wasn't built in a day, unfortunately. So this it's gonna take a little while.”
Tour de France is a 'beast'
The Ineos Grenadiers co-leader crashed out of the Giro d’Italia in a multi-rider fall just past the summit of the Colla di Bossi climb with 69km to go, one day after the first rest day. He was on top form in a contract year, having just won the GC at the Tour of the Alps.
Now he watches his Ineos teammates at the Tour de France on television between exercises with ice packs on his leg. He said it looked to be an especially difficult Tour this year, with so much packed into the first week already.
“To have so much action in that first six, seven days is pretty unprecedented for the Tour, to my recollection anyway. The Tour stands alone as pretty hectic and chaotic in that regard. The Tour is just a really unique beast,” the 28-year-old said.
“I think, perhaps this year's Tour is a little bit more like a classic Giro, where there's really a deeper level of fatigue, because of how much racing has already been done, how many hard days there's been. There's not really been any transition stage, even today. With 50k today I turned it on, and they were fully across the road, riding near flat out, I would say, with the fear of crosswinds and stuff.”
Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) came away with a fourth stage win on stage 1, and Geoghegan Hart thought the big Belgian didn’t get enough credit for his abilities, as most attention is focused on the GC fight between current race leader and defending champion Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and two-time Tour winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
“I think everyone gets so caught up speaking about the GC with those two guys that probably they haven't really appreciated how incredible it is that one sprinter [Philipsen] is dominating in such a fashion, and seemingly with apparent ease. Obviously, he's got a great team behind him with some specialist riders for those lead outs and flat stages. It's been a long time since one sprinter has dominated a Grand Tour, you've got to go back probably to Marcel Kittel, or before that Cav [Mark Cavendish]. So I think it's pretty amazing to see.”
Any predictions from the 2020 Giro champion on this year’s Tour?
“If you look at the nature of the race, like yesterday, it was over an hour and a half of flat-out racing with big-name GC guys getting dropped in the heat. So I think you'll just see more and more of that because so many teams are looking for that stage right now,” he said.
“With two guys dominating on the climbs and one rider in the sprint, it doesn't leave an awful lot for everyone else. So that pressure kind of builds as the race goes on. For all intents and purposes, Paris is just around the corner.”
His return to racing is still on a long path, not around the corner like the Champs-Élysées is on the Tour. He did not say when he’d be back in action, but instead, since talking on the webcast of the travel company, founded by his agent João Correia, said he’d like to ride his bike again in Park City, Utah. He rode there when he was on a Continental team as a U23 rider.
“I've not been there since 2018. I think before that I had been every year for five years, at least once. There was a gravel race in southern Utah the other day, I was having a look at [Crusher in the Tushar], so I’d like to go back to Utah, and Colorado, with the bike at some point.”
