When Fabian Cancellara sat down with the assembled press at the Tour of Qatar in February and announced that he would race for another two seasons before retiring from the sport few would have foreseen one of those cobbled classics campaigns being wiped out through injury.
However on a relatively innocuous stretch of E3 Harelbeke the unthinkable happened. By the time the reigning Tour of Flanders winner picked himself off the floor the writing must have already been on the wall and according to his director, Dirk Demol, he could hardly stand, let alone pedal.
Scans later showed two minor fractures in the transverse processes of his lower vertebrae and Trek Factory Racing later confirmed that their leader would be out of action for the remainder of the spring.
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Understandably Demol could not hide his disappointment and frustration at the finish line, having seen his team’s talisman crash out of the cobbles for second time since 2012.
“I knew immediately that it was terrible," Demol said, still in a sense of shock.
“He couldn’t stand let alone pedal but he tried to continue but when he was by the car he was screaming in pain and then you know there’s something really wrong.”
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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