Egan Bernal has posted a deeply personal reflection on social media, offering a rare insight into the mindset that carried him from the brink of tragedy back to the top of professional cycling.The Colombian Grand Tour champion, who has battled through multiple major injuries since his life-threatening crash in early 2022, wrote on Instagram about the “art of knowing how to suffer” – a philosophy that has underpinned his long road back to competitiveness with the INEOS Grenadiers team.

“The art of knowing how to suffer isn’t something you learn from a book – it’s something you learn from life,” Bernal began, admitting he had woken up “more sentimental than usual” and wanted to remind himself “why [he] started” and “how much it cost to get here.”


From near-death to national champion

Bernal’s words carry particular weight given his journey over the past few seasons. In January 2022, he suffered a devastating crash while training at high speed in Colombia, fracturing his vertebrae, femur, kneecap and ribs. Doctors later revealed he had been just millimetres away from paralysis.

That he even returned to racing in 2023 was extraordinary; that by 2025 he was once again winning at the highest level – taking both Colombian national titles and a stage of the Vuelta a Espana – speaks to a level of determination few can match.

Bernal has often said his perspective on pain changed forever after that crash. In this latest post, he describes how “pain teaches, pushes, awakens,” before concluding with a message to his followers: “When you know how to suffer, suffering becomes your engine. So do it anyway, even when it hurts. That too is an art.”

A champion reshaped by hardshipOnce one of the sport’s brightest young stars – the youngest Tour de France winner in over a century and the first Latin American ever to claim yellow – Bernal’s career was derailed just as it reached its peak.

The years since have reshaped him: no longer defined purely by results, but by resilience. His 2025 resurgence has rekindled belief that he could again fight for Grand Tour success, yet it’s his outlook on hardship that has resonated most deeply with fans.

This latest post, poetic and quietly defiant, reads almost like a manifesto from a rider who has learned the hard way that greatness isn’t forged in comfort. As Bernal himself put it: “Pain teaches, pushes, awakens.”