Twenty-four hours after abandoning the Tour de France, Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) addressed the media at the start of stage 18.
The American pulled out of the race on the road to Pra Loup, with a respiratory infection the main cause. He had been sitting third overall coming into the stage but lost contact on the first climb and despite a brief rally was forced to call it quits.
“I had been fighting this chest cold for a few days, took some antibiotics and thought that if I could get to the rest day then I would be fine but during the rest day I ran a little bit of a fever. It wasn’t huge, around 99.5. I though that if could get some food down, get a good night’s sleep and wake up the next morning then I could be okay,’ van Garderen said, reaffirming the news that he initially picked up the infection on stage 13 of the race.
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Van Garderen has based his entire season on the Tour de France having finished fifth last year. He came into this year’s edition in arguably the form of his life and navigated through the first week with his GC prospects intact. The Pyrenees proved a tough challenge but the American emerged third overall behind Chris Froome and Nairo Quintana with Alejandro Valverde and Alberto Contador just behind him.
However, the rest day offered little recovery time and when he started stage 17 he knew that the game was up.
“When I got out there the legs weren’t working. That just happens in the third week of a Grand Tour and I thought I could ride through it. I joust couldn’t do that yesterday. Maybe I could have lost a minute on the final climb but to lose time on the first climb, that was something more acute and hugely disappointing.
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