Alessandro Petacchi has announced his retirement and confirmed that his abandon on the penultimate stage of the Giro d’Italia last month was the final act of a professional cycling career that began in 1996.
Petacchi was originally pencilled in to ride the Vuelta a Venezuela for his Southeast team but he did not make the trip to South America and told Italian website Tuttobici that he had decided not to race any longer.
“I’m still not well. I haven’t managed to shake off the virus that put me out of the Giro d’Italia on the Colle delle Finestre so it wasn’t right to take on a trip like that if I wasn’t going to be able to put in an honourable performance,” he said. “I’m still Alessandro Petacchi after all.”
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The 41-year-old Petacchi previously retired briefly in April 2013 when riding for Lampre, only to return with Omega Pharma-QuickStep as part of Mark Cavendish’s lead-out train the following August. He confirmed that there would be no second thoughts this time out.
“I haven’t been on a bike since June 9 and if you want to know everything, I’ve already hung it in the garage with the wheels off,” Petacchi said. “I won’t go out on the bike for a while, because I feel tired and without motivation. For the first time in my life, I feel sick of it, I really want to take a break mentally. In life there are moments when you feel clearly what you have to do. My moment has probably arrived now.”
For the time being, Petacchi said that his sporting endeavors will be limited to the occasional tennis match, and he added that he had no intention of saying a more formal farewell to cycling by racing again before the end of the season.
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