No sweets, no drinks, no alcohol, carbohydrates or red meat and not even any painkillers. Alessandro Vanotti is gritting his teeth after he crashed and broke his tibial plateau at the Astana training camp in Calpe.

"It is not easy at Christmas when everyone is enjoying Panettone, Pandoro and mascarpone,” the 35-year-old tells Tuttobiciweb. “Now the keyword is patience and discipline. I have to recover but I have to be especially attentive to the weight. I will try not to gain anything because I want to have less fat when I am back on the bike. That will make it easier to recover. "

This requires Vanotti to be disciplined. But why is he not allowed to use painkillers.

"I sustained the injury last Wednesday in Calpe,” Nibali’s domestique says. “I broke my tibial plateau just when we were near the hotel. There was a roadwork, a truck and a cone. Fabio (Aru, ed.) hit the cone and it went into my wheel, causing the crash. I got up and I quickly realized that there was something wrong: My left side was swollen like a watermelon. Well, after a week I still feel pain, but I will not even take painkillers. I have always avoided that if I can. I prefer to bite the bullet to make my body do its work. I am convinced that with painkillers you move more and I am sure that movement at this stage is not good. You must move when the physiotherapist says so. Only then you can do so because it means that you can no longer do any damage.”

However, it is not all negative.

"When I got home, my daughter told me: ‘Dad, I'm really sorry that you cannot ride a bike, but I'm glad you'll be more with us’,” he said.

Vanotti has received lots of calls and attention from his teammates.

"They are all very nice and I can only thank them,” he said. “I just have to feel comfortable. At this point I just have to think about doing the best I can to be patient and look to the future with optimism. I want to be at the start of the Giro, and this is the main goal for me. Luckily, everything is fine. The scan has excluded complications and ruled out surgery. To quote Dr. Carlo Claudio Castelli, head of the department of orthopedics at the Pope Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, I have a beautiful fracture. It allows me to have a conservative recovery: isometric exercises and some stimulation sessions.

"The team has been outstanding. Dr. Antonino Cassisi, Sergio Veneziani and the chief of Orthopedics Castelli have allowed me to do the scans as soon as I arrived in Orio al Serio and that has been crucial. And Umberto Inselvini, our masseur, is always ready and willing to help me out. And Mauritius Mazzoleni, one of our coaches, returned from Calpe to be with me and help me out in the first part of the rehabilitation.”

Vanotti now has his eyes on a quick return to racing.

"I'm doing everything for the Giro,” he said. “On other occasions, I did not only recover well from an injury but things went very well for me and my captains. I hope that it will be the same this time. At the moment, I just have to think about not gaining weight so it will be white meat, blue fish, no sugar, no carbs, no sweets. If I have to eat rice, then I will eat black rice which is much less caloric.”