Vuelta a Espana: Froome ruled out of Vuelta

“An MRI scan has shown that I have fractured navicular bone in my right foot, so now I’ll work with our medical team on making a full recovery”. “End of the Vuelta for me”, Froome posted on his Twitter account.

Froome was aiming to become the third rider in history to win the Tour and Vuelta in the same year.

He tweeted: “Knocked sideways into a barrier & stone wall today”. Unless I start feeling a bit better than I have the past couple of days, it will be another day to get through and hopefully recover a bit so that I can do something later in the race.

Froome’s withdrawal is the latest blow for the tour organizers in a race that has been mired by risky crashes and controversy.

Tour de France victor Chris Froome fell shortly after the beginning of a mountain stage containing four category-one summits and appeared to injure his knee.

Ten stages remain of the 21-stage Grand Tour which finishes in Madrid on 13 September.

Oleg Tinkoff, the Russian entrepreneur who owns the team, has even threatened to withdraw from the race in protest at the safety provided to riders by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), who run the event.

But in the few minutes it took us to negotiate the 10km neutralised section out of Andorra, the sun came out so I dropped back to the team vehicle and dumped all the extra layers in the window before we started racing. Boycott #ASO for this.

Italy’s Fabio Aru held on to the race leader’s red jersey for a second day with the Astana cyclist finishing safely in the peloton alongside his nearest rivals, Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain and The Netherlands’ Tom Dumoulin, lie 27 and 30 seconds adrift respectively.

A five-man breakaway group of Maxime Bouet, Miguel Angel Rubiano, Jaco Venter, Bert Jan Lindeman and Alexis Gougeard built up a lead of over five minutes on the peloton and almost made it to the finish as only a huge effort from Van Poppel’s Trek and Degenkolb’s Giant-Alpecin teams allowed the peloton to catch them less than two kilometres from the line.