Tour de France - Crash victim Jakobsen sprints to a happy ending
DPA
· 03.07.2022
By Tom Bachmann and Tom Mustroph, dpa
Fabio Jakobsen speaks in a calm and monotone voice. In view of his fate, his monologue almost seems a little casual. But every word is spot on.
"You can think it's a miracle. It's definitely a special story. Almost a fairy tale," says the professional cyclist. On Saturday evening, the 25-year-old sat on the Baltic coast in Nyborg, Denmark, and tried to put into words what had just happened. It's actually quite mundane: Jakobsen had won the second stage of the 109th Tour de France.
Fate day: 5 August 2020
But it's not that simple. Especially not for Jakobsen. The Dutchman almost lost his life on 5 August 2020. He was pushed into the barriers by his compatriot Dylan Groenewegen in the sprint final at the start of the Tour of Poland - at a whopping 80 kilometres per hour. Jakobsen was in an induced coma, underwent countless operations, and his shattered face alone required 130 stitches. He only has a jaw today because the doctors remodelled it from parts of his pelvic bone.
It would not have surprised anyone if cyclist Fabio Jakobsen had ceased to exist. Many of his professional colleagues do not recover from crashes of this calibre. And these were Jakobsen's thoughts in the hour of his greatest triumph. "I'm happy, but the crash has made me more humble," Jakobsen reports. "I think about the riders who didn't make it back. I hope I was able to make a few people happy."
In addition to his fiancée, his parents, his sister and his team-mates, he was particularly grateful to his osteopath. "He's 85 years old, but I wouldn't be sitting here without him. Many muscles no longer worked. He knew exactly what he was doing. I will be grateful to him for all eternity," says Jakobsen. The words of thanks are not just said because it's the right thing to do after such a period of suffering. Jakobsen's every syllable is taken away.
Return to life in three stages
Jakobsen had rationally divided his return to life into three stages. Firstly, he had to become a normal person again. After all, he could barely walk at first. Stage two was his return to the road bike, and the final stage was his development into a top sprinter. "I've come full circle. I'm now one of the best sprinters in the world," says Jakobsen. He sounds incredibly proud, but without sounding boastful.
He wasn't at the level Jakobsen is currently riding at before his fall. He was still a young lad then - wild, powerful, sometimes impetuous. One of his role models was Mark Cavendish. The Brit is his team-mate and has to watch the Tour on TV this year because Jakobsen is better. A difficult reality for Cavendish to digest, after all he wanted to set a record this year with his 35th stage win.
In this respect, there was also a certain amount of pressure on Jakobsen to deliver results and justify his preference over one of the best sprinters in history. He delivered at the first opportunity. "You form diamonds under pressure. I can handle it well," Jakobsen emphasises. It is the first Tour de France of his life, the first real stage.
He has not yet set himself any major goals for the rest of the tour. He wants to take it one day at a time. In the sprints, Jakobsen will once again face Groenewegen, who is also back at the Tour for the first time since the fateful day in August 2020. Groenewegen faced a lot of hostility back then and was also banned for six months: "It wasn't the best time, it was a tough time."
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