If Michael Woods had to break his femur then this was the perfect time while the world stops due to COVID-19.

The EF Education First cyclist from Canada crashed in the fifth stage of Paris-Nice. He broke his right leg and needed immediate surgery. He is now recovering at home in Spain with his wife and newborn baby daughter.

"I'm glad I was able to at least get to that race but it's not a great way to end it and but it hasn't been too bad breaking the femur in the sense that I get to be home with my wife, my newborn little baby girl and because everybody's on lock down, I'm not really missing out on anything," Woods told FloBikes.

He fell in a curve going downhill in the race's fifth stage to La Côte-Saint-André. Immediately, he had to quit the race. It ended up being the last major event with the cycling season on pause while the world waits for the Coronavirus to pass.

"I was pretty lucky in the sense of how I broke it. I broke the femur right in the middle. It was a clean break. So it meant that the surgery was pretty uncomplicated. Just putting a big pin down the length of the femur, then two screws to hold it there," he continued.

"Looks like I can't walk for the next month and a half, but I'm actually able to start riding my bike likely in the next few days. And that will really speed up the recovery and mitigate my fitness loss. But I'll probably be racing in three to four months, and the way things are looking, that's probably when the calendar is gonna be starting back up anyway. So for me, it's been, the timing couldn't be better."

Woods was going to race the Tour de France in July, and take aim at the Olympics in Tokyo and the World Championships in Switzerland. He still considered the Olympic road race after his injury, but then they were postponed to 2021.

"It would have been tight but it was doable," he said. "Now, I'm not going to put any date on when I want to come back. I've ruined one athletic career through trying to push a comeback too fast, when I broke my foot runner. 

"This time around, I'm really going to focus on just doing everything right and not really saying I'm going to be back at this date, but just making sure I'm at 100%. And I know that if I do that then 2021 is the season that I'll still have a lot of success and then maybe even in the late season this year."