After his accident while training on our country’s roads, it was clear that Egan Bernal’s return would not be easy. The serious injuries he suffered led to a long recovery in the middle of a very complex sport where not being at 100% can be costly. The Ineos cyclist managed to compete again and this 2023 was the season in which he was able to regain his confidence.
Ineos has never abandoned the “Cóndor of Zipaquirá”, on the contrary, they have helped him heal his injuries and confirmed this by giving him competition this year.
Egan’s 2023 adventure began at the Vuelta a San Juan, but it didn’t go well. He fell on the first day, with one of his knees being most severely affected. In the fifth stage he was the protagonist as he secured the same box for the overall classification in fourth place. However, the pain did not allow him to continue in the final fraction and he was eliminated.
Almost two months later, Bernal took part in the Tour of Catalonia, one of the races that “beetles” are good at. Luck was repeatedly not on his side and once again a mishap forced him to get off the bike in the middle of the race. It was on the sixth day when he finished 42nd overall.
From then on the panorama changed a lot as the Colombian finished all races. The first was in Itzulia with a box number 92 in the fight for the title.
In April he was able to demonstrate his climbing skills at the Tour of Romandie in Switzerland, and his eighth place in the fourth stage secured him the same place in the overall ranking. It was his first top 10 of 2023!
However, Bernal was not satisfied and repeated what he had done in Switzerland at the Tour of Hungary. Eighth place overall and good feelings.
The most complex races already took place in the middle of the year. First the Critérium del Dauphine, a race in which he finished twelfth, just outside the top ten.
The Tour de France was his first major tour of the season and his performance once confirmed that this year would be a transition. Bernal remained in box 36, more than two and a half hours behind Jonas Vingegaard, the champion of the “Fallic round”.
Now no one expected him to compete in the Vuelta a España, but Ineos confirmed him as a luxury teammate for Geraint Thomas. The Colombian followed the instructions carefully and saved his squad leader for several days. In the end, his team had no chance and had more freedom, as shown on stage 18 when he took seventh place at the finish line in Cruz de Linares.
Box 55 was his final result in the “Iberian Round”, a race with which he closed 2023, a year in which the positive was to feel good feelings again for the “steel horse”.
