Tour de France: Peter Sagan abandons with knee injury

Peter Sagan is the latest victim of an attritional Tour de France.

The Bora-Hansgrohe rider has quit ahead of stage 12 due to a knee injury he picked up following his crash with Caleb Ewan on stage 3.

Sagan injured his knee and his hip in the high-speed crash with Ewan in the sprint finish, which led to the Australian heading home early from the race with a broken collarbone.

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Sagan has been able to carry on and was hopeful his injury was on the mend but he hit it again during the finale of stage 10, leaving him with a painful swollen knee.

“It’s not very nice to see that I’m leaving but after the injuries that I had on the third stage it looked like it was getting better and better, but after I hit the knee against the handlebar in the sprint it has gotten swollen, and I cannot bend my leg. I think there is nothing to do but get some rest and get better,” Sagan said ahead of the stage.

“If you cannot move your leg then where are you going, especially in a stage like this where they are going full gas from the start because of the crosswinds. For sure it sad to me that I abandon the team in this very important stage because I should help Wilco Kelderman to stay up in the front because of crosswinds but there is nothing to do.

“Peter suffered an injury on stage 3 where he hurt his hip and his knee. A chainring took the skin off his patella, where we already worried about infection, but we managed to get Peter through,” he said.

“Unfortunately, he got another hit on the same knee where the skin re-opened, and overnight a big bursitis was developing and came into being and led to the stop from Peter. He will get all the treatment possible, including antibiotics and we will see in the next days how he is.”