For Damien Touzé the Tour of Oman ended in the worst possible way. The French Team Cofidis rider went down during the massive crash on the third stage finishing at Eastern Mountain, the same one that also involved Adam Yates and Valentin Paret Peintre. Touzé was taken to Shifa hospital where he underwent emergency surgery during the night, but that was only the beginning. He is currently hospitalized in Belgium where he will undergo further operations and the medical bulletins speak clearly: his season is over.

Born in '96, Damien Touzé is in his second year with Team Cofidis and, after his debut in Spain, had chosen Oman specifically to fine-tune his preparation ahead of the classics season. In Oman we hadn't received much news from the team who had reported his withdrawal, and only once back in Europe did a general clinical picture emerge. Now, three weeks after the incident, truly terrible details have come to light. The Belgian athlete told Ouest-France the dynamics of the crash, which happened mainly due to nervousness and inattention. «I was reaching for my water bottle and at one point I hit a luminous marker positioned right on the white line. We were going 60 km/h and my hand slipped off the handlebars, I lost my balance and crashed into the guardrail. I managed to get up right away, but I realized something was wrong with my leg because my foot was next to my thigh, which wasn't normal. I felt an intense pain in my stomach and realized the situation was serious,» said Touzé, who was immediately taken to hospital.

The clinical assessment made by the Omani doctors was immediately very serious: femur and tibia fracture, rupture of the medial and lateral collateral ligaments, anterior cruciate ligament rupture and spleen laceration, but above all the intestinal perforation that was initially not noticed and which forced an emergency operation. «The situation was already quite complex, but the doctors didn't immediately notice the perforation and so things got worse, they had to operate on me urgently. Back home they had to reopen me, I had the beginning of peritonitis, my fever was constantly high and I went almost two weeks without eating. In Oman they hadn't closed my abdominal fascia and I had to undergo another emergency operation, I really thought the worst and that I might not be able to go home again,» Touzé continues, who is currently hospitalized in Belgium and will soon have to undergo another knee operation.

According to doctors, recovery time is estimated at seven to eight months, basically season over, but now given the French athlete's condition there's even doubt about whether he can return to racing. It's Touzé himself who admits to fearing about the continuation of his career, and beyond the physical level, the Frenchman is facing a very difficult situation mentally. «I don't know what condition I'll be in and if I can actually move forward, plus I'm out of contract and in modern cycling you can't afford not to be at your best»