2016 was a season of highs and lows for the Lotto Soudal team, their reduced victory tally compared to 2015 was mitigated by an impressive haul of five Grand Tour stage wins, but it was a year in which sporting concerns were pushed to the backs of everyone’s minds.
In what Marc Sergeant acknowledges was the toughest challenge of his career as a manager, the team had to deal with the devastating injury to Stig Broeckx, who suffered sever brain damage when he was hit by a motorbike at the Baloise Belgium Tour in May.
Broeckx was induced into a coma before undergoing operations and there was no cause for optimism when it was revealed in June that he was in a vegetative state, though he has since defied expectations by waking from the coma.
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“The impact was tremendous,” says Sergeant, looking back on the ordeal as he sat down with Cyclingnews and Radpsort at Lotto Soudal’s winter training camp on Mallorca, just a couple of days after the good news.
“If you see it in another team, it’s like ‘ok it must be a shock for everyone’, and you think about it, but it’s not in your team. If you have it in your team, you have to deal with it and find solutions. That was difficult.”
The first step was to bring in a trauma specialist to advice the management on how to handle the situation.
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