Tour de F#©k-It-I-Got-This

I've been watching the Tour since I was 8, and I swear, every single year, in the feed zone, someone crashes and breaks something. So heading into the feed zone on that first day, I was quite nervous. I made sure I was in good position. And then I hit a water bottle, and it shot me off the road. Most of the time, when you hit a bottle like that, it will explode. But if you hit it just perfectly, it can be catastrophic, which is what ended up happening.

I hit a spectator and hit the ground after that. Something didn't quite feel right, but it's the Tour de France, Stage 1. There's no intermissions, no time-outs. I got a new bike and was able to get on. When I grabbed the handlebars, I realized, “Something's not quite right.” You know something's possibly broken. But you also tell yourself, “You can continue. If you pull out now, you're gonna regret it. Make it to the finish, get an X-ray, and then you can make a call.”

It was a very, very long next 100 kilometers. I spent a lot of time at the doctor's car. I had blood coming into my eye, so I needed to get that cleaned up. While the doctor's doing that, I can't pedal. So I had to hold on to the car with a broken shoulder as she's pulling me along at 30 miles an hour and she's rubbing my eye. That was not very comfortable.

I crossed the finish line, which was a relief. Our team doctor was there. The first thing he said was, “You have doping control” [basically a random drug test]. Which was rough—I have use of only one arm, I got all this blood running down my face. But if you miss doping control, you're handed a two-year suspension. After that, we ran through the whole process: got stitches in my brow, then got an X-ray of the shoulder. The X-ray showed everything was still okay. Going through the ultrasound, we saw no fracture. And then he rolled over the spine of the left scapula, and you could see a fracture right through the middle of it.

Your whole world comes crashing down. Generally, you have a broken bone, you're on the next flight back home. So seeing that little black line was pretty crushing. We started talking: “The way it's fractured, it's secure.” It's not like the scapula was in two pieces. You never want a broken bone, but it could have been a whole lot worse. As a professional athlete, you never want to quit. And if your doctor says, “There's a chance you could continue,” it's not a chance. You don't stop.

We got back to the hotel and met with our physical therapist. When I walked in, I couldn't lift my left arm three inches. By the time we were done, I could almost lift it to shoulder height. We're part of the MPCC [Movement for Credible (Drug-Free) Cycling]. You can't take anything stronger than ibuprofen. So I didn't sleep well that night.

The night after the crash, I was like, “I can feel sorry for myself, or we can try and turn this into something better.” As soon as I got into the Tour, it was our plan to try to help out the Velodrome in Houston. And immediately after we set up the GoFundMe, we were blowing by the goals. I had to keep going. [Ed.: Craddock ultimately raised more than $280,000 for his hometown velodrome.]

The first few days after the crash, the muscles in your shoulder and in your arm are tight. Every bump, every turn, every time you put on the brakes, there's shooting pain. It was rough. I couldn't get out of the saddle at all for four- or five-hour stages, 120-mile days on the bike.

The cobblestones were definitely a big obstacle. Those are hard on the body when you're healthy. You're riding over the absolute worst terrain that the organizers of the Tour de France can find. Honestly, I came into the Tour excited for the cobbles, and that turned into fear pretty quickly. It was a brutal day. We had made leaps and bounds in terms of rehab, but you're still racing with a hair fracture in your shoulder blade.

The last road stage was one of the hardest I've ever done, just with the mountains that we climbed. I was off the back. But I was just telling myself, “What is fighting tooth and nail to make it over this mountain? What is that compared to what I've had to do for the last three weeks?”

Finally, on Stage 20, you realize, “Okay. This is it. This is the final obstacle.” And then when I finally saw the one-kilometer banner, it was a pretty emotional moment. Crossing the finish line [in Paris], I saw my parents were there. My wife, my brother were there. They made the trip to Paris to be there for me. My brother squeezed a bit too hard.

“Lanterne Rouge” comes from the olden days. Trains would put a red lantern on the last car to signal at each stop, “This is the last car.” That's how the last place in the Tour de France got its name. In no race do you wanna be last. But a lot of times it tells a story of who had the hardest time getting from the start to the finish. And while I didn't look for it coming into the race, I was last place, and I'm proud of it.

A version of this story originally appeared in the December 2018/January 2019 issue with the title "Tour De F#©k-It-I-Got-This."