Two weeks after Michael Woods crashed out of Paris-Nice, he was in Girona, Spain, his broken right femur on the mend. “I’ve been crutching outside to get my blood checked,” he said. The EF Pro Cycling rider was taking blood thinners following his surgery. “I go about 1.5 km from my place. It’s a good workout.” Because of the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain, the country had been on lockdown since March 14. Woods found the empty streets of Girona eerie.
After the crash, Woods was taken to a hospital in Lyon, France. He didn’t remember much from his time there as he was on strong painkillers. He figured he came in just ahead of any coronavirus-related surge in that area of France as the building seemed quiet. Woods didn’t stay in the hospital for long. His parents came to hurry him to Spain – where he trains in the colder months – before the border was to close.
After the stress of the crash and the hasty departure from France, Woods could relax. In late March, he was avoiding the Internet, reading and enjoying time with his daughter who wasn’t yet two months old. His snuggle buddy Max, short for Maxine, was a perfect lockdown partner as she was too young to walk and was just starting to smile.
“In the leadup to Paris-Nice, I’d been putting in big training hours and I was not as present at home as I would have liked to have been,” Woods said. “So, this has been a nice opportunity to hit the reset button. From a health perspective, that means gaining a bit of weight, just kind of fattening up a bit. I want to get a big recovery block in, and then be mentally fresh for whatever is left in the season and for 2021.”
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Now just gives me less pressure to come back fast and I can just do a proper comeback hi welcome to the Canadian cycling magazine podcast I’m Matthew Pio editor of the magazine and host of the podcast I hope you’re all keeping well and I hope that in these crazy times
You’re able to ride your bike which is probably on the trainer right now which seems to be the safest most sensible thing to do but it’s tough it’s tough as weather starts to warm and uh you get itchy feet to get outside on the roads but yeah I hope
You’re keeping safe and well and uh that you will be enjoying those roads soon enough one Rider who will be off the bike for quite a while is Michael Woods of EF Education First Pro cycling in early March during stage five he crashed in the midst of the per race and he
Broke his femur I spoke with him recently as he was recovering in Jona we spoke using a Voiceover IP app and it was Prime internet usage time in Spain so the audio is a bit shaky woods and I spoke about perin lockdown the Olympics and how maybe just maybe
Despite everything he’s caught a lucky Break Michael Woods you are recovering from a broken femur you’re in Spain a country which has been in lockdown since March 14th and where covid-19 virus continues to spread the road season is on hold because of the pandemic and the Olympics have been postponed until 2021 this seems like a terrible situation for
A pro cyclist so how’s your day today at the moment it’s actually not too terrible I mean I have a broken femur but uh aside from that well because of the broken femur I’m relegated to my house anyways so I’m relatively well relatively unaffected by at the present moment by by the
Quarantine by the lockdown just because this is what I’d be doing regardless if if I had with the broken femur and it’s it’s almost like if if everyone was allowed out have this massive food missing out but I don’t because no one’s outside I’ve been crutching outside uh just to
Go get my my Bloods checked uh on a regular basis because I’m I’m on blood thinners when I’m getting my when I go to get the blood packed I crutch out and it’s about 1.5k from my play place and uh it’s a good workout but when I’m out
There it’s dead it’s a it’s a really eerie feeling uh but for me it’s uh I don’t I don’t think I my femur at a B time just with uh the way the Olympics are going to be delayed and GNA be pushed back a year from now uh now just
Gives me less pressure to come back fast and I can just do a proper comeback let’s go back to Perry nce the the last World Tour race of this season to to date you crashed in stage five what can you remember about that crash oh I I remember it all
Um it it sucked uh pinise was a really weird race for me I wasn’t originally on my schedule I was supposed to do terrain adriatico but then that got cancelled so I got thrown into pinise and parin is probably the last race that on the calendar I do that really scares me it’s
A really aggressive uh really uh stressful race and uh I think also with just all the the fear of uh of the Corona virus and all everything around it us just kind of infiltrated even into my head like affected me just a bit mentally I think I was probably operating at 99.8% as
Opposed to 100% And yeah I wasn’t I wasn’t my normal self in a bike race I was a lot more stressed on the fifth stage I I was passing on a descent I shouldn’t have been I was going too fast in the outside took a corner took the
Corner uh fast and uh would would have been able to save it but but unfortunately hit a big Culvert uh that was uh directly in front of me and flipped over and smacked my uh my leg after your crash you had surgery in a hospital in Leon what was it like being
In the hospital at that time when uh France was seeing its cases of covid-19 Rise uh very quickly yeah it was it was really weird um I was on a lot of drugs a lot of painkillers at that that at that period uh breaking my fumor was probably the
Most painful thing I’ve ever had happen to me and it was uh I was excruciating so I was not not fully fully there in the hospital for a lot of but uh during that period uh all the nurses were wearing masks and uh and uh the hospital did an
Amazing job of of operating on me quickly uh I kind of I think I beat the the rush of of uh coronavirus patients because it was quite actually quiet in within the hospital however uh my parents came up to pick me up from the hospital early because uh we had heard
That the Spanish French border uh was going to be closed and uh yeah we had to I wanted to get back to Spain although I’m not a resident of Spain I’m resident of Andora uh we I do I spent I spend uh my Winters in when winter training in
Spain my family was all in Spain so I wanted to make sure I could get get into Spain before they closed everything down and uh yeah we we had a rushed exit from the hospital a lot of stress and just made it across the border before everything closed down how long do you
Expect the recovery process to be for your broken femur I’ve ruined one athletic career uh because I tried to put a set time on it um my coach Paulo San was pretty confident that we could get me back to this was prior to the Olympics being
Delayed to the the start date of the Olympics um but now that that date’s being pushed back now that the calendar is so up in the air um and also because my team has been just really EF procycling has been really great in terms of they just want me to make a
Full recovery recovery I’m not I’m not going to really put a massive timeline on it uh from what I’ve been told I I am able to start walking uh in uh about four weeks from now I’m I’m two weeks on the nose uh into the post post surgery
Um but also I’m able to start riding the trainer actually in the next day or so uh so once again the trainer I think that’ll that’ll help the recovery process speed of the recovery process then ideally once I can start walking if all the the Imaging goes well then I can
Be back riding outside uh around that period too but I’m I don’t want to I don’t want to be racing until I’m 100% so I’m not going to set a hard date on that I imagine you’ll find the uh virtual world that you’ll be training in quite crowded and um I’m
Understanding that even internet where you are is is taking it uh is being used quite heavily at the moment yeah totally uh bandwidth is at its uh at its limit um but for me that’s been okay I’m really trying to not uh be on my phone that much not spend that
Much time on the internet I went down a bit of a whole pre uh Parise getting caught up and just seeing if races were be canceled if we were going if we were not and it just did was did nothing for my mental health so now I’m just trying
To actually decompress a bit spend a little bit more time with my my my my newborn baby girl and uh hang hang out with my wife read some good books uh yeah and I’ve been really lucky I have uh some uh good practitioners that have been swinging by the house and helped me
With the recovery so it’s it hasn’t been too hard being being a bit more unplugged turning now to the Olympics how did you feel about the Canadian Olympic committee’s announcement that it would wouldn’t send athletes to the Tokyo games if they went ahead this summer I mean obviously I had a biased
Opinion just because after breaking the femur I really wanted to to have the Olympics delayed and uh be able to do a later Olympics but I that aside I felt a lot of Pride um uh there are a lot of uh or NA national federations in the
World that don’t put the health and wellness of their athletes first um there are even governing sport governing bodies that don’t do that uh adequately and uh Canada clearly showed that that was of their first concern is the health and wellness of their athletes they didn’t want to put us risk
And they felt like this was a risk and so I really appreciated that decision and I appreciated the fact that we took a real lead on that um I think a lot of Canadians could feel pride pride in that decision but um as you’ve kind of
Mentioned this is a bit of a I don’t know Silver Lining bonus that the the timing coincides the postponement which came uh shortly after the coc’s decision or announcement um it’s a bit of a a boon to you it gives you that time to recover yeah certainly and uh in a lot
Of ways I mean not thankful I broke my femur that’s for sure not thankful that I had that painful of an injury and to not be walking at the moment however I am thankful at the fact that I’m actually able to be home and uh just
Spend a lot more time with with Max my daughter uh the lead up to pinise I’ve been really putting in big big hours big training hours and wasn’t as present at home as is as I would have liked to have been uh so this has been a nice
Opportunity to kind of hit the reset button uh I’m even trying to kind of just reset uh from a health perspective to gain a bit of weight uh and just kind of fatten up bit get get a big Real Recovery Block in and then and then be mentally fresh for uh
For whatever’s left in the season and for 2021 how much have you been able to study the the the Olympic course to date and can you compare it or how can you compare it with the Rio course you did in 2016 um in 2016 the I felt like the
Course was a touch more demanding in the final stages just because the we did uh I for the the climb in in uh in Rio uh so three times uh and there’s a quite quite challenging climb uh but uh I think think Tokyo’s going to be a really difficult
Course uh having had a chance to Recon it and and do uh Mount Fuji but also M Muni pass really uh that climb is going to be a very important climb and it’s it’s it’s super challenging I think technically uh this course is a bit
Easier but um it is still going to play out like a a one day kind of ardens classic similar to Le or or Lombard idea where you’re looking at you know only one or two or three guys coming to to the Finish Line together you’ve mentioned how in a way it’s things the
Timing has worked out pretty well for you that you have time to recover are there any other Silver Linings you found uh with the challenging situations uh that are happening right now yeah I mean I I also like don’t mean to diminish how significant things are right now and how how uh
How uh weird and scary of a time this is uh and how you know people are being significantly impacted physically financially I don’t mean to diminish that but uh for me it is an opportunity to find some silver lines and and realize that uh how lucky
I am uh and uh kind of give me an opportunity to I think also it’s been an opportunity for me to really um refocus a bit I spent a lot of time really training this this year and was pretty devastating when I first broke when I first realized that my f
Was broken just thinking of all that hard work uh was just kind of put to waste but um yeah now that all this is happening it’s kind of set things back in perspective and made me realize that it’s just bike racing uh this is a very small thing in this world relative to
Everything else and and I’m just lucky to be uh doing it for for a living and as you mentioned you get to uh be home with your almost two-month-old daughter yeah yeah exactly she’s two months old uh that’s wonderful now she’s she’s actually making eye contact and
Smiling a bit and she’s more interactive so it’s been one it’s been wonderful I’m actually quite lucky doing the sense that she’s only two months old could imagine her being being a year old now being able to walk uh I think it’d be much more challenging being locked up in
A a house with uh a kid that could that was mobile instead she’s just a a great little snuggle buddy thank you very much Michael thank you for your time and uh have a speedy and safe recovery oh thanks so much thanks for having me and that’s the episode it’s put together
By me Matthew Pio produced by Adam kilick he also did the music we had help from web editors Terry McCall and Lily Hansen Gillis special thanks to Ontario creates for its support please rate and review the podcast five stars would be super helpful tell your friends get them
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