Irishman won’t ride national championships
Ireland’s Philip Deignan was official confirmed today as missing the Tour de France, being one of three riders who were overlooked from the Cervélo Test Team’s original twelve-man pre-selection for the race.
The 26 year old was in theory one of the team’s stronger candidates for a place, given that he won a stage and finished ninth overall in last year’s Vuelta a España. However he has not been able to reach the same level of form since then, with injury limiting his training at the start of the year and then bouts of illness jarring his efforts to build condition.
He was forced to pull out of the Tour of California due to bad stomach problems, and again withdrew from the Tour de Suisse due to illness.
On Thursday Deignan was involved in a long break on the queen stage of the latter race, and was clearly trying to improve his chances of being selected for the Tour. However being hit by sickness put paid to his chances, and now he will use the time to try to work out what is going wrong.
“I’m going to take 7 to 10 days off the bike and hopefully get to the bottom of why I keep getting sick,” he said on Monday on Twitter. “Then all going well, try and build up for a strong end of season.”
The decision means that he will miss out on the Irish road race championships next Sunday. However the most important thing for Deignan is to find the answer to why his immune system is compromised, work out a solution, and then get back to making the most of his talent.