“I’ll be back!”

Fabian Cancellara has vowed to make the Olympics the focus of his comeback after a crash in Sunday’s Tour of Flandersended his spring Classics campaign on Sunday (1).

The two-time winner of the Ronde van Vlaanderen saw his latest tilt at victory abruptly ended by a crash in the feed zone about 60km from the finish.

“A crash is part of cycling, and in a way it’s also part of life,” a phlegmatic Cancellara told a press conference in Basel, Switzerland today (3).

“I have been working really hard in the last four months to be in the best shape possible for the big races; and I’m confident that I would have performed well. However, I’m glad I only broke my collarbone and that I’m ok for the rest. I’ll be back!”

The crash left Cancellara with four fractures to his collarbone, and an X-ray of the injury was displayed to the press by RadioShack-Nissan-Trek team doctor, Andreas Gösele.

“My colleague, doctor Farkas, used a clavicle pin to put the bone together,” said Gösele. “It’s a procedure where we insert a pin in the clavicle itself, instead of using a plate and a lot of screws to keep the bone together.

“This procedure is a lot more natural and doesn’t affect the strength of the bone once the device is removed. The pin will be removed once the fracture is completely healed, at the very earliest in six weeks time. But this is really a small routine operation.”

Cancellara said pain prevented him from making an immediate return to a stationary bike, adding that he would take up to a week off before returning to training.

“I had two major goals this season: the Classics and the Olympics. The spring campaign is unfortunately over for me now. Because I had planned a break after the classics anyway, my build-up towards London will not change. The plan is that I return to competition in May, possibly the Bayern Rundfahrt, as I did last year.”