Domenico Pozzovivo retires from Tour de France with elbow injury
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Updated 07/09/2020 at 09:50 GMT
NTT Pro Cycling suffered their second retirement in two days when Domenic Pozzivivo retired from the Tour de France with an elbow injury he sustained in the first stage in Nice.
Domenico Pozzovivo
Image credit: Getty Images
NTT Pro Cycling rider Domenico Pozzovivo has withdrawn from the Tour de France due to an elbow injury he suffered in a crash in the opening stage in Nice.
He follows teammate Giacomo Nizzolo out of the race. Nizzolo retired on Saturday's stage 8.
The 37-year-old Italian was in 45th position and almost an hour behind leader Jumbo-Visma's Primoz Roglic. He is now turning his attention to the Giro d'Italia and hopes to be fully recovered for the event.
"I didn't want to leave the Tour without seeing if my body could recover during the course of the race, but the pain every day has been incredible," Pozzovivo said in a press release.
Added to that is the risk of crashing again and causing even greater harm, which is simply too great.
"I'm going to focus now on recovering as quickly as possible, and then look towards my next goal, which will hopefully be the Giro d'Italia.
"I've tried to give my absolute best, and have had incredible support from my team here, for which I want to thank everyone involved. I wish them all the very best for the rest of the race."
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NTT's team mamager Bjarne Riis said: "It's really disappointing that Domenico has been forced to pull out of the race.
"We were very optimistic that he would be able to feature in the overall general classification, but that opportunity was taken away from him on the first stage by the crash.
I've seen how he's been bravely suffering every day, and we've now come to the conclusion that the best thing is for him to stop. We want him to return home, focus on recovering and start looking ahead to preparing himself for the Giro d'Italia.
"It's been so encouraging to see how he prepared himself to be ready for the Tour de France after the way in which he recovered from his serious crash last year, so for his race to end in this way is very sad."
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