After lingering knee injury, top talent Jarno Widar sets date for return

It had been very quiet for a long time around Jarno Widar, but there is light at the end of the tunnel for the still only 20-year-old top talent. In just under a month, he will make his comeback at the GP Gippingen in Switzerland, followed by an interesting race schedule.

Where he became European Under-23 champion and won the Giro della Valle d'Aosta at the end of last year, Widar has only ridden fewer than six races this season in his first full year as a professional. The Limburg rider started strong on Portuguese soil with a fourth place in the Figueira Champions Classic and seventh in the final stage of the Volta ao Algarve, hoping to carry that form into the Ardèche and Drôme Classic, shortly followed by Strade Bianche. But illness prevented that.

Widar's next goal? To test himself in the Tour of the Basque Country and the Ardennes Classics, but that did not happen either. “At the beginning of April, he had an accident during training,” explains Lotto-Intermarché’s sporting director, Kurt Van de Wouwer, to our website. “Unfortunately, that was just before the Walloon Classics. His left knee was injured and as a precaution, those races were then dropped from his program.”

We know Widar as super ambitious. To then evolve within a few months from the biggest rival of Paul Seixas in the Tour de l’Avenir to a rider sidelined for months seems not easy for this top talent.

How is Widar coping with this? “These are things you simply cannot foresee,” says Van de Wouwer. “It happens. I thought he handled it quite maturely. At that moment, you have no choice but to give it time because the knee was far too sensitive. That knee had to fully recover before he could start building back up. So there was no discussion about that. Nervous or not nervous, it wouldn’t have helped. The only mistake he could have made was starting too soon, and we protected him from that.”

The Tour de Wallonie starting June 1 is still too soon, but Widar will resume racing at the GP Gippingen on June 14, followed by the Tour of Switzerland from June 17. Later in the season, his first Vuelta a España is expected, followed by the Giro di Lombardia, where he will make his Monument debut.