The crash that Tom Boonen suffered in the Abu Dhabi Tour in October has left him with permanent damage to his hearing.
The Etixx Quick Step sprinter crashed in the race, hit his head , lost consciousness and had blood coming out of his left ear as well as suffering a temporal fracture.
"I lost part of my hearing and it is permanent. That is anoying but you get used to it," Boonen told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.
"They had told me six months, we are now two months later and I'm training well. I've never even had any bother, just my ear.
"I quickly got my memory back, I know where I was before the fall happened, I remember everything after I had returned to consciousness, and my motor skills are good. I can talk normally, I can see everything," he said in the aftermath.
"All that was reassuring. If there is no pressure on the brain in the first five hours, the greatest danger has passed."
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