According to Alejandro Valverde, his next season’s race program doesn’t include Tour de France. The reason why he has decided to skip this grand tour is because of a few others, just as big tours; Giro di Italia and Vuleta a Espana, ahead of the World Champioshisps in Austria.
This year, the rider was due to participate in the Tour, Vuelta as well as the Worlds. Sadly, his season ended after a horrifying crash on the opening day of the Tour de France. The accident left him with a broken kneecap and a broken talus bone.
Even though he seems to be recovering quite quickly, Valverde has decided to resist the strong temptation to return to riding until next season. It seems the rider has already created next year’s impressive and intense program skipping Tour de France. However, the ones he’s after are definitely some of the world’s most advance and intense tours ever and fitting them into one season’s calendar is a pretty big deal, Tour or with no Tour.
During an interview, Valverde admitted to be impatient asking his Movistar director, Eusebio Unzue to allow him race in the last week’s Milano-Torino race.
“It’s because I’m feeling good. I’m doing 700 kilometers a week. In my training group, people who’ve known me forever, they say I’m at least as strong as before,” he said. “I’m eager to confirm it in a race.”
Valverde also added that once the season rolls around, he likely won’t return to the planned schedule for 2018. “You can’t write anything off in life, but with the signings the team has made this year, with Landa, with Nairo there…I don’t want to do the Tour,” Valverde said to El País.
“I think next year what I’ll have to do is dedicate myself to the Giro, Vuelta and Worlds. Next year the Worlds in Austria is hard, very hard. If Eusebio said to me, ‘you decide your calendar’, I would say ‘Classics, Giro, Vuelta, and Worlds’,” said Valverde.
