Tour de France will likely come too soon, titanium plates used to hold bones together.
BMC Racing’s Karsten Kroon is continuing his recovery from a very serious crash in the spring Classics, and expects to be training again within the next fortnight.
The 34 year old Dutchman landed on his face in the Flèche Wallonne, and did considerable damage. He has listed the final diagnosis, and also charted the measures taken to help him to recover.
“It is now 19 days since I fall in the Flèche Wallonne and 15 days since I got surgery. Time for an update,” he said on his blog. “I was not entirely clear what was broken but, roughly, it will be: my nose in several places, my eye socket on a number of places, the zygomaticum, the maxillary sinus and the cheekbone.”
The extensive facial damage has meant that he has been blending his food and eating it in liquid form. Fortunately, things have been going well in the rebuilding of his face, and he is making decent progress. “According to my surgeon Dr Van den Broucke, the operation was a success. He only had to make one incision inside my mouth, on the right side, and so he didn’t need to cut me outside.
“He used a flesh hook (his own words) to draw the cheekbone back into place, so that the trapezoid fracture of the orbit also fell into place. He has a titanium plate placed on the cheekbone and the zygomaticum.”
Kroon expects to resume training soon and while the Tour de France is most likely too close now for him to be part of the team, he still has several months ahead where he can help his team leader Cadel Evans and also chase results for himself.