December has been anything good for Mathias Norsgaard.

He has spent the majority of the month on the hospitals and the hospitals. First in the Spanish city of Girona, and then in Viborg.

"It has been absolutely terrible," says the 22-year-old cykeltalent to B. T. from the sygesengen in Viborg.

During a training session at the beginning of the month, he was run down by a car close to home in the northeast of Spain. The accident resulted in a broken leg - just as he stood on the threshold of his big international breakthrough at next year's World Tour.

He was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital, where he was admitted, while he waited to be able to come home to Denmark to be operated on:

"because of the Spanish holidays and the problems with the insurance company, I came first to Denmark four days after the accident."

And the flight home is not something he will remember back on with joy.

"It was terrible. Completely out of proportion. I had really a lot of pain, there was not much space, and my broken legs dangled around, because it was not in plaster at the time," he explains.

Mathias Norsgaard had to wait a further three days in the hospital in the middle of jutland, before he smoke on the operating table:

"I was a little disappointed, because it was threatening for my profession as a cyclist, if that went on for a long time. Right there is where I would like to have had a little more understanding of my situation."

the Operation lasted five hours, and subsequently got the young dane found kompartmentsyndrom in the fractured lower leg, which did to the calf muscle swollen tremendously up. This meant that the lower leg could not be sewed together, and therefore was young Norsgaard with open tibia. The syndrome affects approximately one out of 10 and is extremely painful.

"It was wildly uncomfortable to look at. They sliced my muscle up, and the syndrome did, that I won't be able to get some pain medication in four days," he says, and adds:

"It was really an insufferable lows. I thought some dark thoughts in those days, and I'm still afraid, if I have lost something compared to what I could on the bike when I'm done with genoptræningen."

Nine days was shin stitched together, and already the day after he was on the kondicyklen. Genoptræningen is this: quietly forward.

"I can sit half an hour at a time on the kondicyklen, and my goal is to be back in full training in February. I would then like to be able to run the race at the end of march or beginning of april," says Mathias Norsgaard, who had just signed a contract with Movistar before the accident happened.

Here he was destined for an important role in forårsklassikerne, and this is partly why people around the Spanish cycling team since also several times been in contact with the unfortunate dane:

"I have received many encouraging messages from several of my new teammates and the team's owner."

After the plan is Mathias Norsgaard at the time of writing discharged from the hospital, so he can get home to keep christmas with his family.

The 22-year-old dane was last years number three at the under 23 WORLD championships in the individual time trial.

the Contract with Movistar is two years.