Richie Porte out of Tour de France after horror crash

He finished an impressive fifth in the Tour de France past year – his first time as lead rider in the BMC team – despite numerous set backs, including a nasty collision with a camera-mounted motorbike.

This just goes go show that despite making every bit of preparation and making the sacrifices and hard work to winning the Tour de France, anything can happen within the 2,200 mile route that changes everything within a split second.

Bennett improved 14 places on general classification after crossing the line seventh in the mountainous 181km stage from Nantua to Chambery in eastern France.

“If you have a problem you have a problem because once the race starts, the race is on”, sports director Dmitriy Fofonov said.

“I suppose that’s what Aussies do”. Thomas dusted himself off and quickly rejoined the race, too, and Froome said his teammate was uninjured. “Nobody wants to see a big contender go out the way he did”. I always wanted to try for a win a long way out. “I didn’t think it was true”. The last few years, his climbing has been his strength. I didn’t see anything.

Aru hovered at the front after being joined by the other cyclists and looked at them.

Porte crashed and abandoned later on the descent of the Mont du Chat.

“[Christie-Johnson] is the guy who plucked me out of Tassie when I was riding a local race”.

“Honestly, I did not see the moment when Chris Froome had a mechanical problem”.

“He gave me my first chance”. Worse: his FDJ team put three teammates with him to help, in a risky move to try to get him to the race’s first rest day. He has done as much if not more than the [Australian and state sports] institutes. We get those every day, and it said Uran had won.

“What Andrew and Steve Price [team co-founder with Christie-Johnson] have done is incredible. More updates when we have them”.

Porte’s journey is far from complete. But he was struck down by pneumonia, ultimately finishing an inglorious 23.

After several days of blazing heat on the Tour, rain came on Sunday to make the descents of this mountainous 181.5km stage treacherous, with Thomas one of several riders to fall in the early going.

In the final descent to Chambery, Australian Porte, regarded as Froome’s main challenger ahead of the three-week event, went off the road into a wall of rocks.

Richie Porte will be out of action for at least four weeks after suffering a fractured collarbone and pelvis in a horror crash on stage nine which ended his participation in the Tour de France.

“After I caught Nairo (Quintana) at the bottom, everyone was committed and it was just a case of getting to the finish.Like Quintana he came home 1min 15sec behind Uran and now sits sixth at 1:44, with Quintana remaining eighth but now out to 2:13 behind Froome”.