It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Nadav Raisberg hit rock bottom. The lowest point an athlete can reach, because there were many such moments after his dream of riding in the Giro d’Italia, his first Grand Tour, was cruelly snatched away in a crash that left him with two broken hands.
But here’s one particularly “pathetic” moment: the morning after the crash, still exhausted from a sleepless night due to the unbearable pain of untreated fractures, Nadav sought a small comfort in a slice of cake that might sweeten the nightmare, even just a bit. But even that turned out to be an impossible task. With both hands out of commission, Nadav had to struggle for several minutes just to take the first bite.
“Like a little kid—spoon to mouth—but I didn’t give up,” he recalls with a smile now, allowing himself to joke about it in a big way as the triumphant hero of this story.
Because on Saturday, he’ll be lining up at the start in Lisbon for the Vuelta a España as good as new. Just 90 (and change) days separate these two extremes, an absurdly short amount of time that defies all logic. No one believed it was possible for someone to recover from such a complex injury and be ready for one of the toughest athletic challenges there is. In the 21 days of the Vuelta, covering 3,265 kilometers under the scorching Spanish sun, there are no more than two stages with less than 2,000 meters of climbing—one of the toughest editions of this race in recent years. And all this while your team, Israel – Premier Tech, expects you to give your all. No excuses.
“We know how tough this kid is,” says René Andrle, the Czech sport director of the team, who was there at the end of stage five of the Giro d’Italia on May 9, when Raisberg limped to the finish line after his crash in the fifth stage, hoping he might still continue the journey—only to discover in a quick X-ray that both his wrists were broken. “But when we told him his Giro was over, he cried like a child. The tears came from heartbreak even more than from the pain he was in. We all stood there, devastated for him. It was impossible not to feel for him. But it was also hard to escape the thought that this was it. The chances were high that the young guy’s season was over. The Vuelta? No way!”
But one person believed this scenario was possible. Yes, even back then, when he could barely lift a spoon on his own.
Raisberg says: “Today, as I stand on the verge of the Vuelta, I realize how unlikely it was. But at that moment I told myself, and anyone who would listen, that I would move mountains to be ready for Lisbon. I’m not someone who cries, but I used up my quota of tears in the first 24 hours. The doctors found that, in addition to the fractures in my hands, I had torn a muscle in my left leg, so I found myself limping with both arms in casts. But after two weeks, I got on a trainer, and to avoid gaining weight, I climbed stairs nonstop. Thousands of stairs.”
Less than 24 hours after the doctors removed the casts from both his hands, and after seven full weeks away from the road, he lined up at the start of the Israeli championship. “It sounds crazy, I know,” he says, “but that was my way of convincing myself that the dream was possible.” He finished the race exhausted and worn out, but the next day he was already on a flight to a high-altitude training camp in the Italian Alps. In the first few days, he realized how deep the hole he was still in. “I was in bad shape. No wonder: almost two months without a bike.”
But at that dark moment, there was a sharp turning point. A call from the team’s professional staff. “You’re in the pool of riders under consideration for the Vuelta roster,” they told him. They didn’t need to add: “You have less than a month to prove you deserve the spot.”
Raisberg adds: “From that moment, I felt like I was soaring forward. That no one could stop me. There was huge improvement day after day. Climb after climb. My numbers skyrocketed. By the end of the camp, I found myself with power in my legs that I didn’t even have before the injury. When I try to explain to myself what happened, I think it’s pretty simple: their belief in me gave me the strength. I felt there was no way I could disappoint them. That’s what pushed me higher.”
After his test race in the Arctic Race of Norway, a four-day event at the start of August, it was clear that his ticket was secured. “Nadav is the kind of athlete who needs to feel that people believe in him,” says Rik Verbrugghe, IPT’s Sports Manager “He made a very, very impressive comeback, but at least in my eyes—not entirely surprising. But of course, his real test is in the Vuelta, and he has an important role here. We didn’t do him any favors or gestures.”
A serious test indeed, and Nadav is the first to admit it. “I feel stronger than even my peak form before the crash in the Giro,” he says. “But to be honest, I’m feeling a bit of pressure. They expect me to help our leading riders achieve at least one stage win after two Grand Tours (Giro and Tour de France) where we were good but didn’t secure victories. And I feel there’s no way I can let them down. The team or my teammates.”
The victories are expected to come from the team’s leading riders, headed by Canadian Mike Woods, Belgian Dylan Teuns, and New Zealander Corbin Strong, while Raisberg is there to protect and support them. But he doesn’t forget for a moment that he’s also the only Israeli representative on the team this year in the main showcase of the business—the Grand Tours. So in that sense, he also has a personal dream to try to get into a breakaway in one of the stages and maybe finish in the top five. Even a top-10 finish would be a huge personal victory for him. “For me, that would be the way to plant the flag,” he says.
And in many ways, he’s already planted his small flag just by being here. Yesterday, at the team presentation ceremony, accompanied by much applause from the Portuguese crowd, his mother Naomi and sister Gaya stood there, moved to tears. The Raisberg family has been away from Kibbutz Dafna for almost 11 months now due to the forced exile caused by the war in the north, but like Nadav, it’s not even close to breaking their spirit.
“We grew up in a home where we were taught that when you fall—you’re expected to get up immediately,” says his sister Gaya. “We’re all like that, but Nadav has an especially sophisticated toolbox for dealing with such crises. He has inner strength that seems inexplicable from the outside, but those who know him expected him to do it.”
Team owner Sylvan Adams was always confident that Nadav would make it, and he expressed his belief that the team will continue its impressive season: “IPT is sending a strong squad, where, as we did at the Tour de France, we will be hunting for stage wins, and possibly, a high GC finish. This would cement the team’s most successful season to date. Next year’s squad will be even stronger. From our Israeli fans, riveted at the Paris Games after enjoying our record four Israeli Olympian riders (and seven overall from IPT), we are riding a wave of excitement and support from the home country. Israelis, your support is a tailwind for our riders. Y’alla, IPT.”
