There was a point during this season in which Peter Stetina came close to hanging up his wheels and retiring. The long and agonising comeback from a career-threatening injury sustained in 2015 had been hard enough, but when almost the entire peloton began riding away from him during the spring, he started to wonder if he was fighting a losing battle.
And who would blame him? Stetina, as has been well documented, fractured his tibia, kneecap and four ribs in a horrifying crash at the Tour of the Basque Country. Many doubted he would return to the sport but the gutsy American recovered and signed a one-year deal at Trek-Segafredo for 2016. On the face of it, the comeback seemed complete but the reality was far different.
“I almost quit in April,” Stetina tells Cyclingnews in the lobby of a Spanish hotel Trek have taken over for most of December.
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“I was pack fodder and being dropped with sprinters when I should have been there on the climbs. It just wasn’t coming back and I was tired because I hadn’t done stage racing for so long. It was so hard to get that back. I was at this point in April where I was exhausted and getting canned in every race. It just wasn’t happening and my wife said to me, ‘Well you’ve told the team that California is your goal and they’ve given you that, so at least go through with that and see how it goes.’”
More from the Trek-Segafredo team camp
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- Mollema: I'm aiming for the Giro d'Italia before supporting Contador at the Tour
- What makes John Degenkolb tick?
- Trek-Segafredo aims to be number one team in the world in 2017
A glimmer of light
If Stetina’s career as a pro cyclist appeared touch and go, he certainly wasn’t letting on at the time. In the build-up to California he talked up his excitement at heading to the race. Behind the scenes things were very different, however. A bad race and the 29-year-old could have stopped entirely.
The Contador effect
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