Bad luck strikes Bernal: "I hope to come back soon"

After the completion of the Clásica Jaén-Paraíso Interior, many of us were surprised not to see Egan Bernal in the Top10 of the classification when he had been one of the main animators of the race. Shortly after, we were informed by his team that the Colombian had suffered a fall a few kilometers from the finish line.

Egan Bernal breaks his collarbone in the Clásica Jaén-Paraíso Interior

Cycling can be a very cruel sport at times. This 2025 had started off well for Egan Bernal, who was reminding us of the one who won the Tour de France 2019 after winning both the National Championships of Colombia in time trial and road race.

The Jaén-Paraíso Interior Classic was his debut in the European calendar and showed us a tremendously aggressive Egan Bernal, getting into breaks and trying to break the group on every climb of the dirt sections of the race. However, Bernal did not appear in the final classification and the lack of live images made us suspect that something had happened.

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INEOS Grenadiers quickly cleared up our doubts. The Colombian had suffered a fall 12 km from the finish and was evacuated to a local hospital to assess the extent of his injuries. Hours later, the team confirmed the initial diagnosis: broken collarbone.

An untimely setback in Egan Bernal's season that left INEOS Grenadiers with a bittersweet taste despite Michal Kwiatkowski's victory. However, Bernal did not seem particularly saddened, quite the opposite "I was happy to start competing in Europe and to do it with my Colombian champion jersey and also for Kwiato's victory. I felt very strong and obviously I am sad to have fallen, but at the same time, the way I felt during the race gave me a lot of confidence and motivation to keep working hard, the season is very long".

For now, this fall means that Egan Bernal will not be able to participate in the Andalusia Tour that starts tomorrow. However, a broken collarbone is a fairly common injury in cycling and has little impact on the training of professional cyclists. It is almost certain that we will see Bernal pedaling on the roller in just a couple of days, although, if no complications arise, it would not be surprising to see him with a race number on his back in around 4 weeks.