At the Vuelta a Burgos last week, Jay Vine returned to racing after his serious crash in the Basque Country’s Itzulia in the spring. This week he is already riding his fifth Grand Tour. He has fond memories of two stage wins at the Vuelta a Espana, but the Australian was also unable to finish the race in his last two participations.
After a long rehabilitation, the climber from the United Arab Emirates celebrated his comeback in racing at the Vuelta a Burgos. There he managed to surprise everyone with a stage win in the individual time trial. Nevertheless, Vine finds it difficult to always be positive about his rehabilitation. “I try to take everything step by step. It was a serious injury, so I first had to be able to walk again and then be able to cycle indoors on the trainer.”
Nevertheless, the step from training to racing is perhaps the biggest. “But it’s completely different now, going from training back to racing at such a high level. But it’s been a long road and I hope to continue to improve,” said Vine after the opening time trial, in which he set the 14th best time of the day. He lost 24 seconds to winner Brandon McNulty.
The fall and the birth of his first son have made the Australian see professional cycling with different eyes. “I obviously came out of the world of non-professional cycling late, so I always knew there was more to cycling, but the fall put things into perspective for me even more. You shouldn’t risk your life to get a lead in a race. But of course others may see it differently. Now that I have a child and have seen what my wife has had to go through in the last year, I am automatically much less selfish,” concludes Vine.
