Red Walters joins Portuguese team for 2025 after recovering from broken jaw
Grenadian speaks to Global Peloton having recovered after crashing into a tractor in France in August
Three-time Grenada national champion Red Walters will leave Canadian Continental team XSpeed United at the end of 2024 and is heading to race for a UCI team in Portugal.
The 25-year-old won his first UCI race under the XSpeed banner in 2023 at the Tour of Bulgaria and was runner up at the Pan-American road race this season.
Walters, who has been with XSpeed for the past two seasons, ended his 2024 season early in August, suffering a broken jaw after crashing into a tractor in France. He has since been through weeks of rehab and recovery, but is now able to train on the road and prepare for his 2025 season.
“It was a rest day in France, after a race,” Walters told Global Peloton over a video call last week, telling the story of the crash.
“Long story short, I came around a corner, after I was on the wrong side of the road, and just got punted. Somehow I managed to land on the kerb with my jaw, so it literally just got obliterated into six, seven pieces. So I had to have multiple plates put in to put it all together.”
“Luckily, I was with a group. Two of them spoke French as well, which made all the difference. It was proper bad.”
Walters had surgery in France to put his jaw back together with plates. Unfortunately when he came home to the UK, doctors weren’t happy with how things looked and decided to operate again.
“I had surgery in France, but…I don't think they were prepared for how bad it was. So they just sent me home and then I went to get a check-up in the UK, and they were like, no, actually, we're going to need to do it again. So two weeks later they did the same surgery but with slightly different plates.”
“I actually saw my surgeon yesterday for the last sort of follow-up, and he was super happy with how I was healing. I can't complain, given how bad the accident was, to be honest,” he added.
It’s been a long road of recovery for Walters, who also injured his knee in the crash, slowing down his return to riding even further. Throughout December, he has been able to build up the miles in preparation for a new adventure in Portugal next year.
“It was like six weeks of just sitting at home, just willing the time away. The worst thing was, my knee was also quite badly damaged. My meniscus was not fully torn, but it was badly damaged. So I couldn't start training straight away.”
“Then even when I could, they were saying don't ride outside. It's just a bit risky if you crash when it's not fully healed. It can be really bad. So that was eight weeks of training on the turbo and then it must be five, six weeks now of riding outside,” Walters said.
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The crash came off the back of a season which had peaks and troughs. He came within a whisker of winning the Pan-American Championships in May, winning the bunch sprint behind Leangel Linarez of Venezuela who had escaped in the final kilometre. Earlier in the year, Walters had scored several solid results in Greece and at the Belgrade Banjaluka race in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
At other parts of the year, he struggled with illness, particularly after his Pan-American near-miss in Brazil.
“That was the peak to be honest,” he said of the Pan-American Championships. “I had a good result there and then I got ill, which sent me back. Then I think I rushed back to racing too quickly.”
“I didn't feel a good level of fitness again, and then I was just on the back foot for the rest of the season. I didn't really get anything good going after that.”
Walters is looking forward to racing in Portugal next season on a scene that is packed with high quality racing. His first race for his new team is set to be in the UAE, at the Tour of Sharjah in January.
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