A bike crash last summer forced Viktor Brandt to adjust his preseason training. Now, the biathlon star shares his experience with the concussion and his recovery journey.

It was during a cycling session earlier this summer that Viktor Brandt fell and hit his head. The 27-year-old sustained lacerations and a serious concussion, which hindered his training plans for the summer.

Now, Viktor Brandt opens up about the accident.

“It was just an ordinary bike crash. There were about four or five of us who ended up in the ditch afterwards. But I managed to do a real somersault in the crash and landed on the back of my head,” Brandt told SVT.

“Fortunately, I was wearing a helmet, but my collection of ugly scars has grown even larger,” he added.

Feared for season preparation

The injuries from the crash, particularly the concussion, took time to heal. He now reflects on that challenging period.

“It didn’t go quite as I had planned at the beginning of the summer. And it took much longer than I expected,” Brandt said.

The 27-year-old is now back in training and currently at a high-altitude camp with the rest of the national team in Font-Romeu, France. However, it was uncertain for a long time whether he would make it.

“It was a tough period where I was quite uncertain about how the training would go and what I would be able to achieve. But above all, how long it would take. The uncertainty was very demanding,” he said.

In hindsight, Brandt looks back on the crash with a good dose of dark humor.

“The most important thing was that the bike came out of the accident unscathed. The head will heal, but the carbon wheels survived.”

Injury-prone

This isn’t the first time the Swedish biathlete has had parts of his preparation disrupted by unforeseen injuries. Last year, he injured his foot while taking out the trash, which led to alternative training for several weeks and caused him to miss multiple national team camps.

Also Read: Biathlon star continues to prove himself in cycling

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