As it was famously said by philosophically disposed Alessandro Petacchi, it had nothing to do with pure coincidence or bad luck that some riders were crashing more often than others. However, finally ready to speak about his disastrous first part of 2014 season, Daniel Martin (Garmin-Sharp) insists that his spectacular accidents from Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Giro d’Italia opening team time trial were not caused by a lack of proper bike handling skills.

 

Recovering from a trauma after crashing in front of a home crowd, Martin admits that even though he finds no other reason than bad luck for that an incident occurred, he still feels the guild for spoiling team-mates’ Giro d’Italia campaign.

 

It has been already a month since the 27-year old Irishman crashed in the Giro d’Italia opening stage and after completely disappearing from a spotlight for several weeks, Martin is finally ready to speak about his highly unfortunate first part of 2013 season. Garmin-Sharp rider underwent a surgery on broken collarbone right after hitting the deck in Belfast, what was his first ever medical intervention of this kind in an entire life, and reveals that recovery process is going as planned.

 

“I’m alright, the thing I need to remember is the day I crashed I was in some of the best form of my life,” Martin said, according to Stickybottle.com.

 

“Obviously at Liege (where he also crashed out) I was probably at the best form and I had to take it a bit easy between Liege and the Giro. But I was still in incredible condition when I crashed. So having two weeks off was never going to take away that much.

 

“I was never going to get back on (the bike) and be unfit. I think I was expecting to be kind of unfit. But I feel really good. I’ve just been riding my bike, getting in solid miles.

 

“I can’t really do much intensity yet. I’m just strengthening the collar bone. But it’s getting better every day and I get more movement every day. It’s incredible to think it’s over three weeks since it happened.”

 

“On the bike there’s no pain. Two weeks after the operation we had the X-rays and the doctor said if I felt potholes when I was riding that I should stop, it’s too soon for that.

 

“But I’ve never had any pain from the bone. I didn’t put any pressure on it and didn’t use it at all and had the X-ray and got the all-clear. So it’s been good as gold since then.

 

“The muscles around it were weakened and strained from the crash, as well as not using it for two weeks. The muscles start to hurt around the shoulder when I’ve had three and a half or four hours on the bike, or when I’ve had multiple days on the bike, but that’s just a re-training process.”

 

As Martin crashed while riding in the middle of Garmin-Sharp train speeding on a flat stretch of TTT route, the 27-year old Irishman acknowledges that sustained injuries were not, in fact, as severe as one might have expected.

 

“As always, I can look on the bright side and say that I was very fortunate and it wasn’t a more severe injury. At least the collar bone was just a quick, clean break and it took an operation to fix it and get back on the way (to recovery).

 

“It could have been a lot more complicated with ligaments and joints. So in reality, I was incredibly fortunate.”

 

Martin pulled out of the Giro d’Italia, where he intended to finally prove his capabilities as a general classification rider, before the real battle has even begun, and before it happened he his the deck at the Liege-Bastogne-Liege final turn while being on his way to defend the 2013 title. Two such unfortunate events in a row aroused huge sympathy for Garmin-Sharp rider, and fans’ support helped him regaining the mental strength to leave distressing memories behind.

 

“It was incredible. I kind of disappeared for a while. Part of it was the operation as well, everyone gets messed up hormonally, all the anaesthetic and painkillers hit me pretty hard.

 

“I think when you crash and it’s your fault, or you’ve made a mistake and fall on a pile of guys you know what has happened.

 

“But I crashed two races in a row and I didn’t really know what happened. I couldn’t have avoided it. It was just pure bad luck in both cases and that’s what hit me hardest psychologically; because it wasn’t my day on both occasions.

 

“But that also helps me to get back on the bike. You just get on with it. You just have to keep it in the back of your mind and lightning doesn’t strike twice.

 

“But the thing about the Giro that put me in a really dark place is the pain that I caused the guys that I love; my teammates and friends. Even though I couldn’t have avoided it I still have that guilt in the back of my mind that I partly ruined the race and got the team off to the worst possible start. Also inflicting pain on guys you really care about; that’s what really hurt.

 

“Obviously, I’ve talked to the guys and definitely there’s no hard feelings at all. Ryder went on to ride an incredible race and it really shows the character of this team.

 

“That’s why we’re such a strong unit when things are going well, and when things go badly we stick together and fight to the end.”

 

“Everyone joined me on the high of the team presentation and then the moment of stunned silence around Belfast and I felt that. I think it’s really cliché but my pain was shared by the whole country.

 

“And it’s incredibly humbling to feel that and share that moment with me; worldwide TV viewing me on the floor in that much pain. But the people and the supporters were so great and I’m so grateful for it.

 

“It definitely helped me through. Even though I wasn’t posting on Twitter and Facebook I was reading all the messages and it helped me through what was possibly the darkest period of my career.

 

“So I’m looking forward to meeting as many people as possible on Saturday and just saying thank you. Words can’t describe how it felt to get so much support.”

 

However, Martin confessed that it look several days to deal with huge disappointment and become ready to surround his Garmin-Sharp team mates with warmly welcomed support.

 

“I didn’t watch a single kilometre for the first week. I couldn’t even bear to watch it. But I got my head around it. It took me a while to talk to the guys but I got my head right and really started to support them.

 

“And it was great to see Ryder on his comeback trail and hard not to be there helping him. I’m not going to… I don’t even think about how I could have done. Just for the team it would have been great to have two of us there in the mountains.

 

“But that’s the way it goes and you can always take the positives and say I’ll be one of the freshest guys around when the end of the season comes because I’ve only done 18 days racing. Physically and psychologically I should be good.”

 

Even though his recovery process is going as planned and Martin is already back on his bike, it is yet to be seen when he would return to competition and how his race programme for the latter of 2014 season is going to look like.

 

“I keep asking the team what I’m doing but I’m not sure when they’ll announce my plan, we’ll just see how I go,” he said.

 

“For sure, I love riding my bike and it’s the first time in my life that I’ve had an injury that’s prevented me from riding a bike… even just getting on the home trainer after the crash; I never thought I’d want to ride that so badly and riding it would be so much fun.

 

“I normally hate the thing but I was sitting on it happy as Larry for an hour and really enjoying it and thinking ‘what the hell’. It made me appreciate riding in the normal world when I’m fit and healthy.

 

“That first ride obviously I was stiff and nervous but it was still great to get out riding and I think I did nearly five hours which was probably completely wrong but I just got carried away. Mentally I just wanted to ride my bike and maybe the crash will give me the hunger at the end of the year.”