Jurgen Van den Broeck crashed out of his major season goal, the Tour de France, and a subsequent knee injury put an early end to his season. During the months of rehabilitation, the Belgian gained 9,5kg but as he has now resumed training, he has again lost those extra kilos and is now even stronger at this point than he was prior to the 2010 season.

Few riders have had more bad luck than Jurgen Van den Broeck in the Tour de France. When the Belgian made his debut in 2009, riding in support of Cadel Evans, he crashed in the team time trial and lost too much time to play a role in the GC. In 2011, he crashed out of the race and this year, he had a similar unfortunate fate when a tumble in the sprint in Marseille brought his race to a premature end.

When he has finished the race, Van den Broeck has, however, proved that he is one of the best GC riders in the world. In 2010, he finished 5th overall (4th after the disqualification of Alberto Contador) and in 2012, he finished just outside the podium. After his dramatic crash that left him with a knee injury and cut his season short, Van den Broeck is now back in training and has set his sights on another podium quest in the world's biggest bike race.

However, his recovery was a hard one and during his months of inactivity he gained extra weight.

"I was at home in my office all day and could not do anything," he told Het Nieuwsblad. "When I sat for half an hour in a cafe, my knee began to swell.

"My season was over," he added. "What do you do? To eat salad all day makes you depressed. I must admit that at one point I gained 9,5kg. In the end, that was not bad: some extra fat makes you stronger during the rehabilitation. In the meantime, I have almost lost those extra kilos again." 

When Van den Broeck was finally allowed to resume training, he feared that his inactivity had had a very negative impact on his form. However, he has been pleasantly surprised.

"In a test we did a few weeks ago, I already recorded better values than I did in the winter of 2010," he said, referring to the season where he finished 4th in the Tour for the first time. "That year I had the best condition I have ever had in the Tour. I will only really know where I stand in the races but these results are a huge relief after my knee injury, surgery and rehabilitation."

Prior to the 2013 season, Lotto Belisol almost missed out on a ProTeam license as they almost failed to satisfy the sports criterion. In an attempt to avoid a similar scenario, the team management and Van den Broeck decided that the stage racing captain should skip the Ardennes classics to focus fully on scoring points in week-long stage races.

Van den Broeck has now finalized his schedule for the first half of the season and while he still plans to ride several WorldTour stage races, he plans to go back to the Ardennes where he will be part of a very strong quartet that also includes Jelle Vanendert and new signings Maxime Monfort and Tony Gallopin.

"I will again start the season in Argentina even though I will take it a bit  easier than last year [he was 5th in the Tour de San Luis in 2013]," he said. "Then I will do Oman, Tirreno-Adriatico, Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Walloon classics and the Dauphiné, followed by the Tour. It will be new for me to do Tirreno. I would like to have a good result in a race with a strong field. Last year I did an experiment to skip the Walloon classics but that was not a success."

Van den Broeck is currently participating in the Lotto Belisol training camp in Mallorca.