I N S I DE R
DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE
Jelle Lugten
FINDING A NEW DREAM TO PURSUE AFTER A NEAR FATAL ACCIDENT
THE JOSTLING IN THE PELOTON WAS TOO MUCH TO HANDLE. BUT I LAUGHED IT OFF. IT WAS JUST LONGER-THANEXPECTED REHAB, RIGHT? 30
PROCYCLING
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The dream still burned. I just wanted one thing and that was to win the Tour de France. My rehabilitation took a year and a half and all through that time I refused to accept that possibly I would never come back as I was before the accident. The team did all they could for me. For my part, I acted like there was no problem. The results didn’t lie, however, and each weekend I started looking forward to Monday. Then I had to stop racing again because a hangover from the accident was a blind spot in one eye and the jostling in the peloton was too much to handle. But I kept saying, “I feel like the old Jelle” and laughing it off. It was just longer-than-expected rehab, right? Sometimes you need the people close to you to reveal the truth for you. One day last year my sister Ymkje said: “Be true to yourself. If you can look in the mirror and say you feel good without thinking it’s a lie then you are truly better. Give it a try...”
I DID IT that evening. I looked into the small mirror in the bathroom. Behind the small spots of scale and toothpaste I saw myself saying: “You’re feeling good. You’re happy”. I was lying. Two days later, I cleaned the mirror and stood in front of it again. This time I couldn’t repeat the sentence. And as suddenly as that, I had cut through a knot that had tied me down for so long. I left Aix, where I had many happy memories and
went back to Holland – back to friends and family, back to a normal life. I’d spent so much energy getting myself back on the bike but I hadn’t put any effort into social contact with people. Where I raced, Eric, my team manager, saw I had been struggling with myself. When I told him I was going to stop with cycling he acted like he was surprised but I think he wasn’t. All that time, for more than two years, I had been fooling myself. Most scary was how successfully I’d done so. That is the power of passion and dreams of becoming a sports star, I suppose. So now I am studying communication and multimedia design in Arnhem. This is a creative course and I chose it because we often work in groups but it also gives me a chance to show what I can do as an individual. Along the way, I’m picking up with old friends and making new ones. I think it is very important to have a dream. But when one dream falls to pieces, you have to be open for another one. I’ve found that now. I still ride because despite all it has taken from me – and I must admit, given me too – I still think cycling is a beautiful sport. Sometimes I take a ride with a classmate on the mountain bike, just for the fun of it. In the truest sense of the word amateur, I ride for the love of it. But I still want to win! Jelle Lugten is a Dutch student. He was previously a talented junior racer who dreamed of turning professional and one day winning the Tour de France
Illustrator: Tim Marrs
A
t high school I chose to learn French. I was in a class with only girls and no other guy had chosen the subject. “Why did you choose French?” one girl asked me. My answer was simple: “French is the Tour.” You see, all through school I dreamed of being a professional rider. It’s a common dream, of course, but I was driven to pursue it and luckily I had the talent to fuel it. In 2009, I won the big Belgian junior race Remouchamps-Ferrières-Remouchamps when the cramps came right up to my ears and the year before that I won the national junior time trial. I decided to move abroad to where the roads aren’t flat like in Holland. I joined the French team AVC-Aix en Provence. That time spent in the class of girls started to pay off. In the first races with the team I was ruthlessly left behind in the finales. The team manager, Eric Drubay, said: “You can’t attack for 160 kilometres!” I began to ride smarter and make progress. Then it happened. On 28 February 2010, I was riding my best race but I can’t remember anything about it. In a collision with a car that came onto the course, I broke my spine in three places and fractured my skull. I had strokes on the brain followed by meningitis in the hospital. I was in a coma for two weeks. Because of the brain injury my body refused to take any nutrition. I was already a lightweight climber before the accident, weighing 65kg, but within three weeks this had declined to just 45kg. That was my mentality: even after an accident which nearly killed me, all I could relate it to was how it would change me as a cyclist – a professional cyclist.
MARCH 2013
2/13/13 2:29 PM