It’s not been a straightforward summer for Tim Wellens, but on the rain-soaked roads of the Tour de Pologne, the Belgian all-rounder is starting to see some real light at the end of the tunnel.
Wellens was one of the biggest victims of the mass pile up during this year’s Tour of Flanders sparked by Filip Maciejuk (Bahrain Victorious), breaking his collarbone in four different places.
The UAE Team Emirates rider needed two operations to get his collarbone fully fixed, and it still hurts, he says, when he is off the bike and during his everyday life. But racing at least is thankfully another story.
On the plus side, “It’s been a long time since I felt this good on the bike,” he told Cyclingnews during the Tour de Pologne. He believes it’s now realistic for him to start looking at specific race goals for the rest of the season.
Prior to taking part in Poland, Wellens’ one previous race following his Flanders crash was the Tour of Slovenia this summer, with his best result 66th on stage 3. Pologne, on the other hand, is his first WorldTour event and as Wellens, currently running 45th overall, “Now I’m back where I should be,” he told Cyclingnews.
However, it’s been a rollercoaster ride back to health, Wellens recognised. “I had the first operation, but then the plate came loose, so I had a second operation on May 10th and that second operation really knocked me back. I lost a lot.
“So we knew doing the Tour was difficult for me and I didn’t go because I didn’t have the level. But now I have had a lot of time training and now I’m back to where I should be.”
Wellens says he was fortunate enough to be able to stay at home training for a considerable period of time over the summer, as he had already been at altitude before the Tour de France.
Pologne has seen him take a considerable step up in responsibilities, with the 32-year-old part of the team working for João Almeida, currently running second overall, in the Portuguese racer’s bid for victory in Poland for a second time in three years.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve raced, so here I’ll be in a full support role,” pointed out Wellens, himself a winner of Pologne back in 2016. “But after all the races in Poland, I will have chances and it’ll be up to me to make the most of them.
“I’ll do the Renewi Tour, then a lot of one-day races in Belgium and France, and I finish up in the Tour of Guangxi. There are a lot of races, particularly in September, but I’ve missed a lot of racing in the last two months, so when you add them up for the year, it’s not such a big total.”
Wellens has recovered well, but the effects are still noticeable, he says, particularly in what he calls ‘normal life’, his time off the bike at home.
“I still feel the collarbone has been broken, because all the nerves are gone so I have no more feeling there,” he says. Showing a considerable gift for understatement he points out, that “in normal life that’s annoying. I notice that a lot".
“The problem is it was a very complicated fracture, the collarbone was broken in many pieces so they had to put in the longest plate available and make a really long cut for it, so it was not a normal break,” he said. “I notice it when I lie in bed on one side, even if on the bike it’s OK, I don’t feel it.”
Wellens had been lucky until Flanders, in a career now stretching back to 2012 when he turned pro as a stagiaire for Lotto, he had avoided any bone fractures in all the crashes he had. The events of April 2, sadly, put paid to that personal ‘record’, though, with a vengeance.
“They say you are only a professional cyclist when you have broken your collarbone, and now I have, so now I am,” Wellens concluded with a wry grin. But whether that saying is true or not, what’s undeniable is that after so many months of uncertainty and hard work recovering, at Pologne Wellens has found his true place in the bunch again.
