Team Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin was forced to abandon the Giro d’Italia in the early kilometers of Stage 5, with the injuries sustained in yesterday’s crash proving too much for the 2017 winner to continue with the race.
Dumoulin said: “I came here for a three week adventure and I wanted to finish it, I’m not ready to go home. I went on the trainer this morning in my room and it was actually kind of ok, but when I stood up on the pedals my knee was really sore. I also tried it seated but that didn’t work either – I could spin the legs but not race.
“For me its terrible. Months and weeks of preparation and dedication went into this Giro and in one moment it’s over. It’s not how I wanted it to go of course, but it is how it is. I don’t know how bad the injury is, we only know that nothing is broken and it will probably just be swollen for a few days, but we have to see. For now I will just rest and see how it goes.”
Team Sunweb physician Stephan Jacolino said: “Unfortunately the pain in Tom’s knee was too much for him to continue today. He sustained bruising to his quadriceps tendon and surrounding soft tissues, and we hoped the pain might ease as the day went on, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. We’ll see if additional examinations are needed when he returns home but hopefully with some rest, he should be back on the bike with a week doing some easy training.”
Team Sunweb’s Giro d’Italia coach Marc Reef added: “We’re really disappointed to see Tom abandon today, this was our main season goal and we came here for a good GC result, but of course this changes our complete focus for the race. We’ve got a really strong group of guys here, both younger talents and those with more experience, all of which are more than capable of going for a stage. We’ll take a day by day approach, look for opportunities and match our strengths to the stages to try and go for the win.”
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