Ian Boswell lay sprawled unconscious in the middle of a road in Italy as other cyclists sped by and TV cameras zoomed in on his motionless form (see bottom right photo).
At Boswell’s apartment in France, his fiancee at the time, Gretchen Kaija, watched the TV in horror.
“She couldn’t get ahold of me or anyone from my team for hours,†Boswell said, recounting that mid-March crash in the Tirreno Adriatico. “So it was traumatic. Some riders (in the race) messaged me after and said, ‘Oh man, you looked like you were dead.’â€
Boswell is alive and well, living in Vermont, where his new wife — he and Kaija were married on May 26 — is from. But as far as bike racing, it has been a long, slow recovery for the professional cyclist from Bend who just last year raced in his first Tour de France.
There will be no Tour for Boswell this year, as he continues to recover from that fateful crash, which resulted in a concussion — the sixth of his racing career. He also missed the Tour of California in May.
“That’s been a difficult thing to digest,†said Boswell, reached by phone in Vermont last week. “By the time the Tour of California came around in mid-May and I still wasn’t training, that’s when I knew there was little chance of me getting back to the Tour (de France), just knowing how much work goes into that and the base level of fitness you need to prepare.â€
Boswell, 28, was racing in Stage 4 of the Tirreno Adriatico with his Swiss-based Katusha-Alpecin team. He was descending, he recalled, when something happened with his front wheel and he went over the handlebars, landing violently on the back of his head.
“My front wheel got overlapped or I hit something,†Boswell said. “I don’t really remember much.â€
He was later told that he regained consciousness after 60 to 90 seconds, at which point support staff with his team arrived to help. He stayed overnight in a hospital and initially thought he would be sidelined for about a week.
He saw specialists and underwent MRIs, he recalled, as doctors found evidence of prior concussions from crashes — concussions that had not been detected before.
Struggling physically, mentally and emotionally, Boswell said, he returned to the United States in mid-April to see additional doctors and to prepare for his wedding. He connected with doctors at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire and has been making progress in his concussion recovery while seeing a vestibular specialist.
“It’s essentially physical therapy for my balance and vision and how those work together, and also especially trying to ride a bike again,†Boswell explained. “I’ve been riding for a couple of weeks now.â€
Getting back on his bike has been crucial for Boswell after missing about two months of training.
“It has been just so enjoyable, just to get out and ride,†he said. “I’m riding without too many goals or expectations, just trying to get better and faster, trying to slowly build back.â€
Boswell said he has a plane ticket to return to Europe at the end of July, and he might try to start racing again by August.
“If I’m ready and I have a clear head, I think I’m going to race again and just see what that tells me,†Boswell said. “There’s still quite a few occasions where I’m doing something or I’m on a longer ride and symptoms come back, like headaches or dizziness. Hopefully those subside, but it just depends on how those change over time.
“I’m at a point now in the process where I have to give myself that option, to try to do it again.â€
Boswell said he realizes that if he continues to race, he will crash again at some point. The question is whether or not he hits his head again when he does crash, and what the consequences of yet another concussion would be.
The Summit High School graduate did much more than finish his first Tour de France last July — he rode impressively in the Alps and the Pyrenees to help Katusha-Alpecin teammate Ilnur Zakarin to a top-10 overall finish and also placed 79th overall himself in a field of 145 finishers.
Boswell was the third-highest-placing American overall (five Americans finished) and third-highest on the Katusha team after the 21 stages and 2,082 miles of cycling’s greatest race. He also finished the Vuelta a España, another of cycling’s Grand Tours, last September.
This year’s Tour de France starts on July 6, and Boswell will be watching on television.
Boswell said the Katusha team has continued to pay him his salary and has been understanding in giving him time and space to return to the U.S.
“I’ve been keeping them in the loop with what’s going on and with my plans going forward,†Boswell said. “I’ll try to get back to Europe at the end of July and if I’m ready and able and want to try to race again, hopefully I can line up again in August. There’s still a lot of steps that have to be taken before I get to that point.
“There’s been a lot of ups and downs emotionally through this process and through the recovery. I’m definitely on an upswing now. I still love riding my bike.â€
— Reporter: 541-383-0318,
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