Denmark's Jonas Vingegaard during the fifth stage of the Tirreno Adriatico cycling race, on March 8.Fabio Ferrari/LaPresse/The Associated Press
Two-time defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard remained hospitalized in Spain on Friday, one day after he broke his collarbone and several ribs in a bad crash with other top riders during a chaotic Tour of the Basque Country.
The Danish rider’s Visma-Lease A Bike team said further tests revealed that Vingegaard also sustained a collapsed lung and a pulmonary contusion during the crash in Thursday’s fourth stage. The team said cycling’s leading rider was “stable and had a good night” but remains in a hospital in the northern Spanish city of Vitoria.
The accident came less than three months before the start of the Tour de France on June 29, when Vingegaard was scheduled to again face off against his leading rival, Tadej Pogacar. The highly anticipated rematch of former champions is now in doubt.
There was more carnage at the week-long Tour of the Basque Country on Friday, when Mikel Landa and Soudal Quick-Step teammate Gil Gelders crashed in the fifth stage. Landa, the runner-up in the race in Spain a year ago, was put into a neck brace and taken away on a stretcher.
“[Landa] was taken to the local hospital where X-rays revealed that he has suffered a fracture to his clavicle. He will now undergo further investigation to determine the best path for his recovery,” Soudal Quick-Step said later Friday.
Romain Gregoire of Groupama-FDJ won Friday’s stage in a reduced sprint. Mattias Skjelmose of Lidl-Trek remained in the overall lead heading into the final stage Saturday, which features a hard climb that could shake up the general classification.
Vingegaard was hardly moving Thursday when he was put into an ambulance wearing an oxygen mask and neck brace after the harrowing crash with less than 30 kilometres remaining in the stage. The pileup also took out Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel, along with several other riders, many of whom needed treatment in hospitals.
Evenepoel broke a collarbone and his right shoulder blade and was set to undergo surgery when he returns to Belgium on Friday, Soudal Quick-Step said. Evenepoel said in a post on social media that “obviously my plans for the short future will change but I hope and think that my long-term goals will not change.”
The 24-year-old Evenepoel, a former road race world champion and the reigning time trial champ, is scheduled to make his Tour debut this summer before he participates in both of those events at the Paris Olympics.
Roglic, a three-time Spanish Vuelta winner, emerged with just scratches, according to his BORA-Hansgrohe team, but the reigning Olympic time-trial champion nevertheless had to abandon the race he was leading.
The accident happened Thursday as riders were making what appeared to be a conventional right-hand, downhill turn. One rider’s front tire appeared to slip out and send other cyclists off the road. There were some large rocks and trees in the area, though it wasn’t clear if any of the riders hit them, along with a concrete drainage ditch on the edge of the curve.
Race director Julián Eraso said the accident was a surprise since the organizers considered the curve to be “easy” to handle.
“You never know where an accident can occur,” Eraso told Spanish radio Cadena SER. “This year the roads were good, wide, easy roads. That curve to the right was easy [and] there was an indication a few meters before to let riders prepare for it.”