Di Luca, Bettini abandon

ByReuters

Published 14/09/2006 at 12:34 GMT

Italy's Olympic champion Paolo Bettini and compatriot Danilo Di Luca, the 2005 ProTour winner, failed to start the 18th stage of the Tour of Spain on Thursday.

CYCLING Tour de France Di Luca

Image credit: Imago

Bettini had announced his likely departure last week to train at home for the world championships in Austria on September 24, where he will be a leading favourite.

Di Luca, who is also expected to form part of the Italian squad for the world championships, also quit the race.

Both riders have won stages of this year's Tour of Spain.

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Bettini took a bunch sprint on stage two to Cordoba and Di Luca won stage five's summit finish of La Covatilla and led the race for three days.

Di Luca was 17th, 16 minutes and 55 seconds down on overall leader Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, while Bettini was 36th and 46:52 adrift.

Thursday's stage is a 153 km run from Granada to the summit finish of La Pandera. The race finishes in Madrid on September 17.

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