In the moments before the impact which could have ended her life Imogen Cotter had singled out all the things she was looking forward to. Her new place in Girona, where she had moved into earlier that day with her new flatmate, her first race of the new cycling season with her new professional team only weeks away.
Cotter actually remembers one particularly blissful moment where it felt like her life couldn't be more perfect, where she felt grateful for all she had around her and for making her dream become a reality. With that in mind she set out on a gentle solo training ride around the hills of northern Catalonia.
Then out of the proverbial nowhere came all the things Cotter wishes she couldn’t remember. A white van fast approaching from the not blind curve on the road ahead, overtaking another cyclist, only instead of pulling back in, it veered off onto a slip road and directly into her line of direction, resulting in a full-on collision, the impact on flesh and bone invariably worse than on metal and glass.
Her right side took the brunt of it, straight into the front windscreen of the van, Cotter ending up on the side of the road several metres down from the collision, her first and only naturally hysterical thought at that point being would she make it out alive.
“I remember seeing the van, thinking ‘bloody hell, if he’s overtaking that cyclist, he’s cutting it fine’,” she says. “He was coming very quickly, if he’d just turned back in, I’d have been okay, but instead he took the road coming off the curve, came at me at full speed, basically.
“I think he was going too fast to even notice what was in front of him. After that I just remember the feeling of hitting the van, the noise of it actually, which was madness. Then waking up on the ground, and a man holding my hand, who turned out to be the other cyclist, and he had the kindest and most soothing face I’d ever seen.”
That man was Bruce Wicherski, an American living with his wife in Girona, the Catalan city long regarded as a sort of safe haven for cyclists, amateur or pro. Cotter moved here on January 1st, a few months after signing her first pro contract with the Belgian-registered Plantar-Pura team for 2022, on the back of winning the Irish road race title last October.
At age 28, just over four years after starting in road cycling after her previously competitive sporting life in Clare as a distance runner, Cotter indeed had many things to look forward to: only here she was on the side of a road in Spain, unable to feel anything down the right side of her body except for unbearable pain.
Ambulance
Another Catalan cyclist on the scene, Sergi Caner, called an ambulance, using the mobile phone belonging to the driver of the van (who did remain at scene, although didn’t engage with Cotter, clearly in his own state of shock). First the police arrived, then the fire brigade, then an ambulance unable to administer any pain relief, so Cotter had to wait on a second one: they were around 10km south of Girona, she was drifting in and out of conscious, still far from sure she would made it out alive.
When we speak from Girona on Wednesday it’s exactly three weeks since the day of the collision, and Cotter has been in and out of hospital twice: the urgent concern was the smashed patella on her right leg, then the fractures in her lower right arm. Both necessitated surgery.
“I remember when Bruce was holding my hand, on the side of the road, he said my right knee was open like a flower, and I was just screaming for pain relief. He thought I might die, was worried about internal injuries, and I think in my mind I was trying to stay alive as well, trying to remember things, like my family names.
“In the back of the ambulance I was lucky I remembered my dad’s mobile number, my phone was completely smashed, and that’s a phone call no parent wants to get, the sirens going in the background, the shock if it.”
A shock for sure, only neither her father Fintan nor her mother Aine at home in Clare were unaware of the risks involved in cycling: her uncles Jamie McGahan, winner of the Rás in 1981, and Ronan Cotter were both highly successful in their day, well used to crashes too.
Still, this was the first time Cotter had broken any bones, the fracture in her radius and ulna of her right arm requiring further surgery last weekend. “The knee surgery was actually nothing compared to what I went through with the arm. I woke up twice, which was terrifying.”
Wider support
Which is where the importance of wider support also kicked in, her parents promptly joining her in Girona, her mother staying on until this Saturday, her new flatmate, German cyclist Alina Jäger, also setting up a Gofundme account which has already raised €25,705. Because Cotter signed a contract for the year, her team Plantar-Pura will continue to back her, although nothing about the experience so far has dented her determination to make an impact in professional cycling.
“No way, and I know some people come to me with that outlook, and I am so sensitive to my mental space at the moment. But I’m really trying not to see it that way, I don’t see it that way. I don’t see it as a lost opportunity, because I could have died, basically.
“So it’s easy for me to say, ‘okay I can’t ride my bike for a while, but I could be dead’. That puts things massively in perspective for me. I’m being very positive, and that’s easy when I think of all the freak ways that things could be so much worse.
“Like I was at the physio on Tuesday, he was telling me the way I broke my knee was actually the best way you can break it, horizontally. If I’d broken it vertically, my whole tendon would have torn off my kneecap, and I would have had a way longer rehab.
“Who gets hit by a van, going at 70kmph, and only breaks two bones? I broke the entire windscreen of the van, and I’m able to meet friends and have a chat, feed myself and dress myself, a week or two later. Obviously I was very unlucky to be hit by a van, but I was incredibly lucky at the same time.”
Four clean parts
The Girona police investigation continues; in the meantime Cotter’s Canyon road bike remains broken in four clean parts out on the flat balcony. “I still can’t go out to look at it. I want to, but at the same time I’m afraid. I think the further I get away from the accident, the more I think ‘how am I still here?’ When I look back on the scrapes all down my face, and my helmet.
“Yes, it’s a setback, but I don’t see it as a career-ending setback by any stretch of the imagination. For me I still see this as the beginning of my career. I will go 150 per cent in for this rehab. Even yesterday at the physio, I just said, ‘don’t tell me anything negative, even if it’s the worst thing you’ve seen, lie to me’.
“There’s fear there too – I know there is some trauma to dig through. I know there is talk about toxic positivity, where you push on regardless and bury the negative thoughts deep down. I have to acknowledge this is a dangerous sport, yes I could have died, but the successful people in this sport have learned a way to make that fear work best for them.
“And the support from the cycling community has been incredible, the donations have blown my mind. Even still I get messages, it sounds cheesy, but when they say my attitude helps them appreciate every ride, that’s so sweet, and comforting.
“I try to see the silver lining in everything. I had big goals this year, but I’ll be racing by the end of the season, middle of the season maybe. I do not plan on making this year all about the rehab. I still want to race. It will just take a bit longer to get to that start line.”
