Following months of recovery from a devastating crash at the 2020 World Championships in Tuscany and a limited programme of racing last summer, Chloe Dygert made her long-awaited road race debut for Canyon-Sram at Saturday's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
Last year, she took part in the time trial event at the US Nationals before turning her focus to both the road race and time trial at the Tokyo Olympics, though the Opening Weekend marks the first time she's raced alongside her teammates since joining the Women's WorldTour squad at the start of 2021.
Speaking after the race, Dygert described her spring Classics debut as a "wildcard" race for her and a chance to judge what it was like to race in the European peloton for the first time. The goal for the day was to put in the work for her teammates, though it was 25-year-old who ended up as the team's top finisher in the chasing peloton behind race winner, Movistar's Annemiek van Vleuten.
"Definitely coming into this race, I didn't know what to expect," Dygert said. "I considered it a wildcard race for me. I wanted to come in and do what I could for the team and also learn where I was at physically and mentally being back in a peloton, and also this being my first time in Europe and first time in two-plus years doing a road race outside of the Olympics.
"So, I was coming into this race trying to get as much experience and working on everything I could to prepare myself and be with the team for the upcoming bigger WorldTour races."
Dygert, who was last in racing action at the Tokyo Olympics TT in July, where she took seventh place, said that she has several takeaways from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad ahead of the spring season, in particular getting to know her teammates and starting to work together on the road.
"I'm going to walk away from this race and have several things that I know I need to work on for these upcoming races," she said. "Us as a team as well. It's my first time with these girls, Shari, Sarah. It's going to be good for us to move forward and work together as a team and start flowing and figuring each other out and keep moving up from there."
Following the 128 kilometres of racing — which started out in near-zero temperatures in Gent and were run through chilly temperatures all day — Dygert did run into one problem which related back to her severe leg injuries sustained in that collison with a guardrail in Tuscany.
She said that the weather, along with the sections of coasting in the peloton during the race, contributed to pain in her leg that persisted after the finish and even caused her trouble in warming down later. The pain resulting from that career-altering crash, she noted, could be a constant throughout her racing career.
"The leg — I still have my bad days, especially when it's cold outside," she said. "Today, when we're coasting and things are slow, the weather definitely impacted my leg. It was definitely hurting at the end of the race, especially with a lot more coasting after that final climb.
"It really cooled down my leg and for sure after the finish it was very hard to pedal my bike after sitting for a little while, too.
"It's definitely getting better every day, but I still struggle with the pain, and I think that's how it's going to be for the rest of my career probably."
