After crashing a couple of stages ago on this year’s Tour de France, Italian champion Vincenzo Nibali was forced to abandon the event due to damaged vertebra.
He is now resting and taking proper medical treatment but that surely does not mean the champion plans to extend his time off more than two to three weeks.
Apparently, he is taking the much needed days off to prepare himself both mentally and physically for the upcoming cycling events that include Vuelta a Espana and also World Championships.
“The Vuelta and Worlds were in our plans, and those plans remain the same,” Nibali’s coach Paolo Slongo said.
“Vincenzo will have further checks when he goes home but from the diagnosis we’ve got, he’ll only have 15 days off the bike. If there aren’t complications, then he’ll be back to ride the Vuelta and the Worlds as planned.”
The cause of the crash
Even though Nibali’s crash was not filmed on camera making everyone wonder who was the real cause of the accident, some footage released by fans who were filming on the roadside indicated that the Italian champion had fallen right after his bike got hooked by the strap of a fan’s camera.
“I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to get into the specifics of it. I saw the videos that were floating around last night. There were people coming onto the road, and the barriers maybe weren’t doing much to stop them,” added.
“We invested a lot of time in the Tour de France and to go home in this manner is very sad.”
