Team CSC's Karsten Kroon finished 59th in the Tour of California with a broken rib, but it wasn't until the Tuesday after the event that the Dutch rider realised his rib was broken.
"I sat up in bed to sneeze and I almost passed out from the pain. There was no doubt something was wrong and I went straight to the hospital. As it turned out there was a gap of about one centimeter in the fracture," explained Kroon.
The broken rib, which Kroon didn't discover until he returned home to Europe, was the result of a crash in the opening stage of the Tour. Despite undergoing examination, including x-rays, the break went unnoticed.
"They only took pictures of the front, where everything was fine. When I crashed I hit a pole both at the front and the back of my body and apparently the damage was at the back," he added.
Kroon will take a few weeks away from racing and on a home trainer but he is expecting a quick return. It's the second injury Kroon has endured in as many months, after fracturing his wrist earlier in the year.
"I'm hoping to be able to race again in a couple of weeks, even though it'll probably hurt a lot longer than that," said Kroon. "My rib was put back together this morning and I also had some massage and some tape put on, but there's not much else you can do about it."
