In a time of negative news cycles and depressing geopolitical developments, here’s a positive, uplifting, and heartfelt story for you: how Michael Valgren became cycling’s comeback kid. Four years on from breaking his pelvis, dislocating his hip and suffering multiple knee ligament tears, the Dane has won a stage of the Giro d’Italia, his first ever Grand Tour triumph at the age of 34.
Go on, let that smile rip across your face. It did for Valgren and his EF Education-EasyPost teammates.
To say Valgren was physically battered and bruised after his accident at the 2022 Route d’Occitanie wouldn’t quite be accurate. He was mentally tortured by consequences of a 10 metre fall down a mountain side. Prior to that, he was one of the sport’s strongest rouleurs, those climber-types who thrive on the short stuff, can hold their on the medium-length ascents, and then possess a fast finish. Valgren likens himself to a Swiss Army knife – flexible and competent at every task.
He won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Amstel Gold in 2018, two results that showed his versatility – one victory on the cobbles, the other over The Netherland's most brutal bergs – and that were sandwiched between a fourth place at the Tour of Flanders. He was 26, flying high, so very high, and sixth at the 2019 World Championships further underlined his top dog status. Two wins in successive days in the Italian autumn Classics in 2021 then preceded a bronze medal at the 2021 Worlds. The Dane was at the peak of his athletic career.
Then the story takes a dramatic twist.
At the 2022 edition of the Route d’Occitanie, a French race that takes in the Pyrenees, Valgren was in the stage four breakaway when he crashed – hard, very hard – on a descent. He went over the guardrail and tumbled down the other side. He immediately knew he had done some serious damage.
A helicopter came, tied a rope around him, and lifted him up into the air. His sports director, Tejay van Garderen, looked on in shock and horror. When he got to the hospital he was told that his hip had come away from the ball and socket – as clean a dislocation as possible. His entire knee, meanwhile, was destroyed.
Valgren was motionless for six weeks, but even when he began physiotherapy he faced the problem of only being able to bend his leg just beyond 90 degrees due to the build-up of scar tissue. For five months he spent five hours a day doing physio week; most of the time he went home in tears. The pain just wasn’t subsiding. Progress just wasn’t visible.
Sissel, his wife, a professional therapist, helped to steer him away from the depths of depression, but then another pregnancy and a broken leg for their son complicated matters ever further. His mother-in-law came to relieve the pressure, but she was diagnosed with cancer. Doctors then feared that Sissel would give birth prematurely. Everything that could go wrong, was going wrong.
Things then turned for the better – but slowly. Valgren returned to racing in 2023, but contracted to EF’s development team it took until the autumn of that year for him to look capable of reproducing his past success. Eighth at the 2024 Dwars door Vlaanderen was a further sign that a successful comeback was brewing, and then he thought he had secured his fairytale victory on stage five of the 2024 Giro only for Frenchman Benjamin Thomas to beat him in a three-up sprint. There was no bitterness, though: only pride. “I’m just grateful I can still be a cyclist,” he said.
He twice came close again in that Giro, and returned to the Tour de France for an eighth time last summer. But it wasn’t until this spring’s Tirreno-Adriatico that he was a race winner again, attacking from the break on the final climb of stage three and holding off the GC men behind. “This win means everything,” he said.
Well what about a stage 17 win in the Giro, secured with a vicious dig 1km from the line? “I missed this [a Grand Tour stage win] from my resumé,” he smiled. “I think I deserve this. I think my career has been pretty good, but I needed this. Luckily it came today.” In his back pocket he carried a lucky Pokemon charm from his son. It worked its magic in Andalo.
Valgren was knocked down – badly – but he got back up again. Key to it all was never giving up, never losing faith. “If you start to lose that winning mentality, you might as well stop racing,” he said after his Tirreno victory. “I never lost that.” He most definitely didn’t. His heartwarming, inspiring tale is what we all need to hear every once and a while.
