After recovering from serious spinal injury, Briton has an offer from outside the sport
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Scott Thwaites on a descent during stage 6 at Tirreno-Adriatico(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Scott Thwaites (Bora–Argon 18) at the front(Image credit: Simon Wilkinson / SWpix.com)
Jack Bauer, Geraint Thomas and Scott Thwaites on the podium(Image credit: Guy Swarbrick)
Scott Thwaites (Bora-Argon 18)(Image credit: Sabine Jacob/CV/BettiniPhoto)
Scott Thwaites (Bora–Argon 18) at the front of affairs(Image credit: Simon Wilkinson / SWpix.com)
Scott Thwaites is considering calling time on his career as a professional cyclist, revealing that he is weighing up a job offer from outside the sport.
The 28-year-old Briton has spent the past two seasons at WorldTour level with Dimension Data but his contract has not been renewed.
After catching the eye in the Spring Classics in 2017, his 2018 campaign was derailed by serious injury as he fractured several vertebrae in a training crash at the end of March. He returned to racing in July and competed in the BinckBank Tour and Tour of Britain but his outlook on his career and life had changed in the intervening months.
“In the end I just want to be happy with what I’m doing, especially after the accident. The main aim was being able to function in normal life again, to have a normal life outside, whether I cycle or not," Thwaites told The Yorkshire Post.
“There’s more to my life than cycling and I didn’t want cycling to take over. I also didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself to come back because my health was worth more than that.'
The newspaper suggested Thwaites has offers from other teams, but is also considering an offer from outside the sport.
"It’s a really nice option working with a company I’ve had dealings with in the past," he said.
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In the end, Thwaites was on the sidelines for just over three months, a relatively short stint for an injury that threatened to end his career.
“I did think that at some points I wouldn’t return... The doctors wouldn’t make any promises really because it was up in the air," he said.
"It was a case of how well I responded to the surgeries and my rehabilitation. I think I was always fairly confident, and the surgeons were fairly confident, that I would be able to get back on a bike in some form but whether I’d be able to return to competitive racing at the same level was another question.
"But everything went really well and I had such a strong group of people around me. British Cycling helped out with a lot of the rehabilitation and that really helped. In terms of coming back to racing, it was all just a bonus really. The main thing was that I recovered from the injuries and that I was able to just be a normal person again."
