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news
Richie Porte at 2015 Giro d'Italia (picture ANSA, Daniele Dal Zennaro)Richie Porte out of Giro d'Italia after nightmare week
Richie Porte says he is “gutted” to be out of the Giro d’Italia due to injury following what can only be described as a nightmare week for the Team Sky rider, who began as one of the pre-race favourites.
Team Sky said this morning that medical staff had advised the 30-year-old Tasmanian to withdraw. He will now focus on getting fit to support Chris Froome at July’s Tour de France.
This time last week, Porte sat in third place overall but his challenge began to unravel on Tuesday, when he accepted a wheel from Orica-GreenEdge’s Simon Clarke following a late puncture.
He was docked 2 minutes for accepting illegal assistance and also lost 47 seconds on the road.
Porte was then caught up in the crash near the end of Friday’s Stage 13 at Lido di Jesolo, injuring his knee and hip and losing more time.
He was off the pace on Saturday’s individual time trial, and lost more than 27 minutes on yesterday’s stage to Madonna di Campiglio.
Porte told the Team Sky website: “The Giro has been my main goal this year and I’ve worked incredibly hard all season with this race in mind.
“I’ve had a lot of back luck this week with the puncture and the time penalty, but it was the crash on Friday that has taken its toll.
“I fell heavily on my knee and hip which caused me a lot of pain on Saturday’s time trail and yesterday’s stage.
“I just wanted to keep trying and give it everything but now the medical team have advised me not to continue.
“I'm gutted it’s ended this way and that I can’t stay and support Leo [König], Elia [Viviani] and the team in the last week.
“They’ve been outstanding every step of the way and to not be able to repay that is tough.
“The plan for me now is to take some time off the bike, get the medical treatment that I need and reset my goals for the rest of the season and come back fighting.
“Hopefully I can get myself ready for the Tour team,” he added.
Today is the second rest day of the Giro, with the race led by Alberto Contdaor of Tinkoff-Saxo by 2 minutes 35 seconds from Astana's Fabio Aru.
Racing resumes tomorrow with a daunting stage from Pinzolo to Aprica, including the climbs of the Tonale and the Mortirolo.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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15 comments
The hapless Porte. He truly is the Frank Spencer of cycle racing, if Frank was an Australian stoner.
I don't think that Porte is a quitter, at the end of the day you do what your paymasters tell you to do. If you are injured then the team will try and protect their asset.
However i would question him being a leader and to a degree a fighter.
After the time penalty his body language suggested that he had given up. Indeed the road position of the team leading up to 'the crash' did not imply that they were keen to keep their GC man out of trouble. Seeing Sky mid bunch is very unusual and positionally very dangerous, as proven. Surely as team leader and GC hopeful Porte should have been controlling his troops to stay at the pointy end of the race.
Some excellent racers are just not designed to win grand tours. Porte remains a brilliant support rider, not a lead.
After the 2 mins fine Skys full team should have retired due to illness, what a one sided show the Giro is this year, Astanas strong links to doping, Contador with an iffy past, ooopppssss sorry an iffy bit of beef is this really what cycling needs welcome to the Giro 2015 and the future of cycling, UCI you have really won the peoples vote this year.
Guessing you didn't have a good weekend Andy and needed to vent?
How can he be classed as a quitter when he's advised by Dr's to not carry on.
Or would you prefer he carried on against Dr's order and totally knacked his knee for the rest of the season ??????????
Sounds more like Colin doesn't really believe there was that much, if anything, wrong with the knee. My impression only clearly....
And this is the time for LEO!
Looks like the Porte cabin was a great idea then,wonder if Chris Froome will move in for the Tour de France
Nothing much you can do against a bunch of Kazak fucking cheats though,this Giro will go down in infamy,mark my words,Astana dirty cheating bastards that will put Armstrongs record to shame
Out of 8 grand tours this is the first one he has withdrawn from.
Quitter? Aye, right...
yeah he's definitely a quitter for climbing off and going to get physio treatment so he's back to fit for the TdF.
Cue - a long line of lard arse keyboard warriors calling an elite athlete a 'quitter'.
Its common for sprinters to climb off when there is nothing left for them to win - Porte has no chance in GC and probably cant be much help otherwise so whats the point of going on?
I dont blame him one bit (injury or not)
Im sure Oleg Tinkov would make him race on but then again Oleg Tinkov is a massive @rsehole.
Sure he would, because he is paid to race, and that would be a big goal to achieve. That the time penalty has put him out of contention means that as professionals, they have to consider how else they can maximise their ROI. That doesn't make him a quitter.
Quitter. Kick in the balls that the two minute time loss was I have no doubt he would be racing his socks off if he was still 20 seconds behind on GC. I don't really buy this knee thing.
I know what you mean to a certain extent, but he took a long time getting back on the bike after that crash and really didn't look good at all - refusing the warm-down at the end of the stage and saying he's not doing any pedalling saying 'my knee is fucked' could have been the start of the gamesmanship. Shipping all the time in mountains could have been more but i'd personally like to give him enough credit to think he'd stay on for the last few days for the team if it wasn't medically un-wise.
Just a shame for the GC there isn't another on-form rider contesting it - would give another permutation to think of each day and make things a bit more interesting (not that i'd bet a huge amount on Porte against Contador in the real high mountains)>