De Stig
“Most crashes result in broken collarbones, and this is another consequence.” – Thomas De Gendt
As openings to cycling films go, this almost borders on the excruciating. The Lotto-Soudal team are gathered around the dinner table in Toulouse after Caleb Ewan has edged out Dylan Groenewegen in the bunch sprint to claim victory on Stage 11 of the 2019 Tour de France. Enter an ungainly figure, tall and lithe but with obvious impairments both to his frame and his speech. Yet his grin is expansive while those of his team mates are fixed and awkward. The conversation is stilted, not because of his impairments but because, to a professional cyclist, he is an apparition. He is their worst fears made flesh; the ghost of Christmases yet to come. “He’s just like he was before”, assures directeur Herman Frison but maybe even he knows his words are slightly hollow.
The Spring of 2016 was wretched for cycling and for Belgium in particular. Wanty–Groupe Gobert rider Antoine Demoitié made his World Tour debut at E3 Harelbeke but died little more than 48 hours later after a race moto hit him as he lay following a crash at Gent-Wevelgem. More bad news was to follow. The day before, Daan Myngheer had suffered a heart attack during a stage of the Criterium International and was immediately rushed to hospital. Mere hours after Demotié’s death, the 22 year-old Roubaix Lille Metropole rider passed away in hospital on Corsica. Exactly two months later, another cruel twist of fate unfolded.
Some 65km into stage 3 of the Tour of Belgium the road narrowed, causing 2 overtaking race motorbikes to collide and the ensuing crash pitching both machines into the bunch, taking out no fewer than 19 riders. Stig Broeckx – already recovering from a broken collarbone suffered in an accident involving a race motorbike at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne mere weeks previously - was one of 11 riders taken to hospital as the stage was being cancelled. Unconscious, Stig Broecks was clearly suffering another consequence.
De Stig isn’t a tale of mere recovery from injury. Broeckx would spend the next 6 months in a coma, having suffered 2 separate bleeds on his brain as well as a fractured eye socket. As we learn, he had been a whisker away from being clinically brain dead and for much of those 6 months “coma” was just a nicer term than “vegetative state”. He had no recollection of much of his professional career or his relationship with his girlfriend. He was mystified (but delighted) when friends and team mates came to visit him in hospital as he began to recover – “you came for me?”
This is the story beyond the hashtags. When the social media #fightforstig had become the purpose only of his family, friends and a select band of professionals and the #neverforget brigade #alreadyhad, De Stig follows Broeckx the better part of 3 years down the line, taking uncertain steps on the long road to some semblance of recovery and independence. As all-consuming and (to the outsider) selfish the lifestyle of a professional cyclist is, the film serves to underline the cast of dozens who were no less consumed picking up the pieces: from the neurosurgeons who took care of him immediately to the physios who provided specialist rehabilitation; from the coaches with whom we see him working to his parents whose own nightmares must surely have seemed to be coming true.
Spoiler alert, De Stig is essentially the opposite of - say - Chris Froome’s well-documented return from a potentially career-ending/life-altering crash. There were no Instagram thumbs-up while Broeckx firstly clung on for life and then battled to move, to walk and to speak again. There will be no speculation as to whether he’ll ever be as good as he was before the accident and yet it is a story of relentless positivity and a desire to regain fitness and independence. Yes “put me back on the bike” is perhaps a cliché and we do see him progress from the turbo trainer to a tricycle (“that’s embarrassing sometimes”) to a farm bike and then on to a road bike but a Hollywood ending isn’t on the horizon. That said, perhaps the only real moment of pathos in film is when he admits that the flickering dream of racing again on two wheels again is just that.
But while tragedy is the catalyst for De Stig, it is not the theme. If anything, Broeckx’s relentless positivity is what shines through even when that positivity may not be enough. There is joy in simple triumphs - annunciating words properly, beating the clock pushing a weighted sled in the gym and - emotionally - completing a charity walk in aid of his rehabilitation centre. There is joy also in Stig’s smile and optimism.
If a Hollywood ending isn’t the film’s conclusion then perhaps it’s a sense of the ending of a chapter and a beginning of another. You can find out what Stig’s up to now by checking out CyclingTips but before you do, make sure you watch his story - or at least what was his story over the last 4 years.
De Stig is presented by CyclingTips and available to rent or buy on Vimeo.