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Egan Bernal has voiced his desire to join an elite club of riders who have claimed title honours at all three Grand Tours.
Bernal won the Tour de France as a 22-year-old in 2020 and triumphed at the Giro d'Italia in 2021 before a horror training crash made cycling a secondary consideration in 2022.
The Colombian climber, speaking in Japan ahead of Sunday's Saitama Criterium, appears as lithe as ever after his first full season back in the saddle, and were it not for his humbling candour you wouldn't be able to tell the grievous horror he's endured and overcome.
"How I survived this accident is not normal, so above all, I'm happy to be alive," Bernal said.
"In cycling, we always think about being number one and winning the Tour de France and blah, blah, blah, and I did, too, before the accident. But when you realise that you are, like, you know, a normal person and you can die, and you experience being in bed unable to move, and all these things … I was lucky."
Bernal was on his time trial bike during a training ride when he crashed into a stationary bus at speed in January last year, suffering chest trauma, a punctured lung, and several fractures - a broken right femur, patella, ribs, and facial fractures - which required multiple surgeries.
"When I first woke up, I wasn't worried whether or not I would be a cyclist again," he recalled. "I just wanted to move and be able to walk and have a normal life."
"I think that's why I don't have bad moments mentally because I know how lucky I was just to be alive."
Egan Bernal being feted in his hometown of Zipaquira after his Tour de France victory
Bernal miraculously competed in three races toward the end of last season, before taking on a full schedule this year, which included the Tour and the Vuelta a España.
"When I had just finished the season, I was tired mentally and physically," he said.
"I had started in the Volta a Catalunya and then I was doing high-level races with only short recovery periods in between. But I think it was a good decision to do this kind of workload, in terms of next season. It was hard but hopefully, it's going to pay off next year."
Bernal finished 36th at the Tour this year and 55th at the Vuelta but took the most confidence in his performance at the latter.
"After the Vuelta, I feel good with what I did - and had more confidence about next year," he said when asked if he was happy with his season.
"I was of course really tired, but I enjoyed the Vuelta compared to the Tour. At the Tour I was going full gas every day. In the first week I was OK, more or less, but after one week I was completely empty, and I was not able to enjoy the race. It's not the best race to go there to suffer because it's really, really hard."
"But at the Vuelta, even if I didn't get any major results, I was able to enjoy it. I was able to attack a lot of times and I wasn't so far off the front."
Bernal has nothing to indicate when or even if he will be able to return to the giddy heights he reached before his crash, but his mindset and actions every day are geared around doing so.
"I wake up every day thinking I will be back in my best level. I want to have that mentality that I will be able to be one of the best riders in the world because otherwise, I think I would not continue riding the bike in a professional way. I'd just retire," he said.
"I think I will be able to be there if I keep having the mentality to become one of the best again. For sure when you are up there with the best and you feel what it means to win a Grand Tour - the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia - with just one race like the Vuelta missing... To me, to be really happy with my career, it’s just the Vuelta, so I really want to be back at that level and I’m really working for this."
Whether Bernal focuses on a title shot at the 2024 Vuelta, as the last Grand Tour he needs to win to complete his 'set' of victories in cycling's toughest stages races, remains to be seen.
"In a normal situation, you can more or less imagine how your performance is going to be but at the moment, I don't know. Maybe it'll be really good or maybe I will need to start doing a lot of kilometres and races again to be on a good level, so it will depend also on my performance," he said.
He will need to discuss his plan for next season with his Ineos Grenadiers team and coach, but he has outlined the Colombian National Championships and Tour Colombia both as early season targets next year, and as confidence-building objectives.
Egan Bernal was celebrated again in Zipaquira after winning the Giro d'Italia
Bernal is aware that when he signed with Team Sky – then the Grand Tour powerhouse – in 2018, he was part of a succession plan that quickly worked out.
Team management speculated earlier this year that had it not been for Bernal's accident, the team may not have been overtaken by the likes of Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates.
"When I [extended] my contract in '21, just after winning the Giro, they believed in me and put a lot of the team's responsibilities on me. It's not something I can control that I crashed in training," Bernal said.
"I know the original plan was for me to be competing against these guys in the Grand Tours. I think it was bad luck for us, both for me as a rider and, of course, for Ineos as a team," he concluded.
Bernal doesn't see any difference between himself and rival counterparts like Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma), Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), save for his accident.
"They are really competitive. They really want to win every race. They arrive in good form to win, and you need some strong, hard work to do that," he said.
"Now it's something I really cannot do, but I’m trying to do my best to arrive in the best level possible. When I was going well in '19, I won Paris-Nice, Suisse - I was starting to win everything. I don't think they have something we don't have, or I have something they don't have. All champions have that strong mentality."
"It would be great to see how my level is compared with them in a normal situation. I don't know if it will be possible after everything, but that's what I'm trying to do."
Bernal revealed he has spoken a few times throughout his recovery and return to competition with former teammate Chris Froome (Israel-Premier Tech), who is also in Japan.
Froome is one of seven riders to have won all three Grand Tours, and someone who in 2019 endured a similarly horrifying accident training on a time trial bike.
"Since I was a kid, Froomey was like a hero for me. What he did, winning four Tours de France, the Giro, the Vuelta - everything he did is just amazing," Bernal said.
"And actually, I chose [in 2018 to join] Sky because of him. Because I wanted to be part of his team. Just to be in his team for me was a dream.
"And now with this accident, it is kind of similar, I have talked with him, and it shows me that you have to do what you want to do for yourself, not for other people. I have a lot of respect for Froomey, for what’s he’s doing. It gives me a lot of morale to continue, to be honest."
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