After crashing out of stage four at the Tour Down Under and breaking several bones when his tyre blew on a descent at around 70kph, Giant-Alpecin youngster Lawson Craddock has headed home to the USA.

After the tyre belew, he then bounded into a drainage ditch, with his front wheel collapsing, sending him catapulting over his handlebars. One rider who saw the crash said, “It looked real nasty. I could see him flying over his bike.” Craddock suffered a broken wrist, rib, and sternum, injuries that kept him in the hospital for observation for three days.

“I’ve definitely been better. I spent three days in the hospital before finally getting released,” Craddock wrote in an email to VeloNews. “I should arrive [home] tomorrow night, and then I’ll start the long road to recovery. Hopefully, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“It’s hard losing a teammate during a race, when he’s sleeping alone at a hospital, not sure when he can go home,” said Giant-Alpecin teammate Koen de Kort. “With a broken sternum, everything hurts, including breathing.”

The team isn’t sure how long the 22 year old will be out for and they are not putting any pressure on him to return, preferring a full fit Craddock to one that was not so fit but back earlier.

“Any crash can be dangerous, and from the sounds of it, this could have been even worse,” said Giant-Alpecin sport director Addy Engels. “He’s young, so he has a lot of time to recover. There is no pressure to return. The most important thing is that he becomes healthy again.”