Richie Porte’s Grand Tour ambitions may be over for another season but Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford has warned that the Australian should not be written off as a three-week rider despite this year’s disappointing Giro d’Italia.
Porte came into the race on the back of a hugely successful start to the season and was earmarked a genuine contender for victory alongside Alberto Contador and Fabio Aru. By the time the race hit the first rest day the trio were separated by less than 30 seconds with Porte in third.
However a two minute time deduction on stage 10 for illegally taking a wheel from a rival team rider, a crash, further time losses and a hammering on the first day in the Dolomites saw Porte abandon the race and head home.
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“He was bitterly disappointed obviously but that’s part of being a pro athlete. To put it behind you, dust yourself down, find some new goals and go again,” Brailsford told the press at the start of stage 17.
“It’s very easy to say that he didn’t finish and that it hasn’t quite worked out and it’s easy to write him off in that sense but I don’t think that’s fair or appropriate.
“He’s won some fantastic races in some fantastic ways this year so he is physically up there with the best climbers in the world when he’s on song. Can he put it together for three weeks, who knows? This time around he’s had his crashes and his incidents, but it wasn’t that he got dropped, but it all counts.”
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