Tadej Pogačar’s six-week program of recovery from his Liège-Bastogne-Liége crash and injury may still include a spell of altitude training from mid-May to early June, Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reports.
After a busy and highly-successful first part of the season, the Slovenian star had always planned to use the next two months as his build-up for the 2023 Tour de France, with a repeat of just one stage race, the low-key Tour of Slovenia, on his program prior to July.
There had been fears that the scaphoid fracture caused by his crash in Liège-Bastogne-Liège could have seriously affected that process.
But according to the Belgian newspaper report, citing team sports manager Joxean Fernandez Matxín, Pogačar could yet be training as planned at an altitude camp by mid-May.
"Tadej is now taking three weeks of rest," Matxín said in the HLN report.
"Normally a wind tunnel test and the reconnaissance of a number of stages were on the program, but these have been scrapped. If all goes well, he will join the team at altitude training."
Earlier this week, UAE Team Emirates medical director Dr.Adrian Rotunno described Pogačar's fracture as "comminuted" (broken into several pieces) and said the surgery to realign the bone fragments with a small screw was successful.
"Due to the nature of the injury, it’s approximately six weeks recovery. Though he will start with immediate rehab, and some training on an indoor trainer in the coming days."
The UAE team camp will take place in Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, where Pogačar has done altitude training in the past. He could then head to the Tour of Slovenia, where he is defending champion, from June 14-18.
Matxín maintained the team’s optimistic line about Pogačar’s chances of making it to the Tour start in Bilbao on July 1 to try and win it for a third edition in four years.
"There is plenty of time for that, we think," he said.
