Mikel Landa has abandoned the Giro d'Italia part-way through stage 10 after finding himself in trouble early on.
The Team Sky leader, who was third overall at last year's Giro, was dropped on the first climb of the day, the third-category Passo della Collina, which came just after 20 kilometres. Finding himself over six minutes in arrears, Landa climbed off just shy of the start of the second third-cat climb of Pietracolora over 30km later.
ADVERTISEMENT
Landa's struggles were all the more shocking given the way he had surpassed all expectations in the stage nine time trial, which left him in a very promising position on GC - eighth and less than 30 seconds back on pre-race favourite Vincenzo Nibali (Astana). Landa was already feeling optimistic ahead of the mountains - his preferred terrain - and it is unclear what exactly caused his slump, though there have been cases in the past of riders struggling the day after a rest-day.
Team Sky's GC hopes are now a thing of the past, with Nicolas Roche their next best placed rider at 6:47 down on leader Gianluca Brambilla.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1TXckMV
No comments:
Post a Comment