Ivan Basso quits Tour de France after testicular cancer diagnosis

Ivan Basso will leave the Tour de France to undergo surgery for testicular cancer, discovered on the rest day in Pau, the rider revealed. The Spaniard, who is sharing a room with the Italian at the Tour, reportedly sat alongside Basso in Monday’s press conference in tears.

The departure of Basso, who will return home to Italy for further tests, is a blow both personally and professionally to the Tinkoff Saxo Bank team leader, Alberto Contador.

“We will try to meet Ivan in Paris with the yellow jersey”, said Tinkoff-Saxo sports director Steven de Jongh, per Sky Sports.

“For a few days I felt a small pain”, he said at the team hotel on Monday. Yesterday [Sunday] our doctor spoke with the doctor of the Tour and we decided to go to make a special analysis to the hospital.

After a small crash in the fifth stage last week, Basso experienced some discomfort and will withdraw from the race before heading back to Italy for treatment.

“I can’t say to you more details because we discovered this two hours ago, so that’s all”. “Now the first thing is to analyze what’s happened to Ivan, to support him and hope that everything’s resolved as soon as possible”.

“However, it started to irritate me so this morning we visited a well-known urologist here in Pau”. He said he had ridden approximately 120 of 180 days with Basso this season in training.