'I'm honestly feeling like I got away too lightly, and I feel guilty about that' - Imogen Cotter relives horror bike crash

The sound of the impact still haunts elite Irish national road race champion Imogen Cotter.

There was the bang and the next thing she remembers is waking up and being overcome with the emotion of not being dead.

"I’m alive, I’m alive!" she cried at an American ex-pat who was, miraculously, on the same stretch of secluded Catalan country lane when the head-on collision with a white Fiat Doblo van happened on 26 January.

But the bang stays with her. "I hate it," she said, snarling, before breaking down for the first of several times during our two-hour interview.

The physical pain she can take - for the most part. It's the mental toll that sometimes hurts more. "I hate it," she repeated, addressing it like something ever-present, living and breathing in her space.

They say those who come close to dying have unbelievable clarity in the moments leading up to a near-death experience.

The 26-year-old from Ruan, Co. Clare describes hers thus.

"It was a Wednesday, a bit like today, cloudy and overcast and I just had two hours easy scheduled on the bike.

"I had moved house that morning, which was a big feckin' effort, and I was planning to go out training at 11 or 12."

Cotter is a professional cyclist, one of the very few Ireland has ever produced. She earns a living from a salary paid by her Belgian-registered team Plantur-Pura, a small squad made up of mainly German, Belgian and Dutch riders.

It's not a big salary by any means - not compared to what professional men make, but she can get by on it, and she's cool with that.

This was going to be a big year for her. A new home, a new team, new friends and new opportunities were just some of the things she was looking forward to in her adopted city of Girona in Spain’s north-east corner.

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