Arvesen pulls out of Tour

By Agence France Presse

The Saxo Bank team suffered a setback Tuesday when Norwegian road champion Kurt-Asle Arvesen was forced out of the race after suffering a broken collarbone in a heavy crash during the 10th stage.

The 34-year-old Norwegian champion, who won the 11th stage on last year’s
Tour, fell after 87km trying to avoid a spectator who had fallen into the road. He finished the stage, but was obviously in great pain as he pedaled near the back of the peloton.

Saxo Bank spokesman Bryan Nygaard confirmed the bad news.

“He’s out of the race,” Nygaard said. “We’ve just returned from hospital where scans confirmed the suspected fracture. It’s fractured in two places.”

The loss of Arvesen is a setback for Saxo Bank, called CSC last year when the Norwegian played his role in helping former team leader Carlos Sastre win the race.

This year Arvesen came to the Tour as the newly-crowned Norwegian champion and primed to peak for the crucial third week of the race which features key climbing stages and an individual time trial.

“It’s a big blow to team Saxo Bank,” said Nygaard. “He was our team captain and was the man to organize tactics. He came here peaking perfectly so obviously he’s gutted. It was his big objective of the season.”

Andy Schleck, the team’s top overall contender, said the team will feel the loss.

“He is one of the most important riders in the team,” said Schleck. “He was one of the captains who took important decisions. Now we are without him; there is not much else you can say. Crashes happen and sometimes you break things. He was unlucky today.”

“It’s a big hit for us to lose Kurt,” said Andy Schleck’s older brother and teammate Fränk. “It’s going to hurt us for the race, not just losing a friend after 10 days. That is a real bummer.”

With Tour organizers having banned radio communication between riders and team managers both for today’s race and Friday’s stage, Jens Voigt said the lack of information played only a minor role in the drama.

“A motorbike hit a spectator who fell into the road, another rider went across his (Arvesen’s) wheel and he crashed,” said Voigt. “It was one of those things you can’t foresee — the chaos was there.

“The only bad thing was that it took us 10 minutes to find out he had crashed and that was by someone in another team.

“With a radio we would have known that straight away, what happened, if he’s good, if he’s bad and whether he will come back into the peloton.”

FILED UNDER: News / Road / Tour de France TAGS: Tour de France