Annemiek van Vleuten (MIthcelton-Scott) has recovered from a debilitating knee injury sustained in a crash at the World Championships last year and will return to racing at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on March 3 in Belgium followed by the Women`s WorldTour kick off at Strade Bianche on March 9 in Italy. `I will race Omloop Het Neiuwsblad and Strade Bianche,` Van Vleuten told Cyclingnews from her training camp in Tenerife. `I will be doing them in a domestique role and support my team. I think it`s good to support my team and to get a little bit of racing in my legs to see where my fitness is and how much longer I will need to be at a level where I can race the finals again.` Van Vleuten secured top honours in the overall standings of both the Women`s WorldTour and the UCI World Ranking in 2018 after dominant performances won her the overall titles at the Giro Rosa and Boels Ladies Tour, and the one-day La Course.ADVERTISEMENT She won a second consecutive world title in the individual time trial at the World Championships in Innsbruck, however, a crash during the road race forced Van Vleuten to end her season and go into recovery mode for the next eight weeks. `X-rays showed that I suffered from a tibial eminence plateau fracture, which is also known as a tibial spine fracture, an intra-articular fracture of the bony attachment to the ACL on the tibia,` Van Vleuten wrote in the January edition of her blog on Cyclingnews. `The injury required surgery to repair. That was three months ago, and I still need physiotherapy as part of my recovery process, but, I no longer need therapy to bend my knee or leg anymore because this part of my recovery has improved well. The treatment has shifted to improving how much I can stretch my leg because it needs to be 100 per cent to walk normally, so this is what we are working towards. The good news is that I have no limitations when it comes to cycling or training.`
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