Richie Porte attacks near the end of stage 3 at the Tour de France
Richie Porte is attended by medical staff after crashing during stage 9 at the Tour de France
Greg Van Avermaet leads the breakaway during stage 8 at the Tour de France.
Damiano Caruso (BMC) lost yellow during stage 6(Image credit: Courtesy of Polartec-Kometa)
Perhaps a planned celebration for Greg Van Avermaet should he win any of the major Classics(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
The BMC Racing riders head towards the Pyrenees with different goals and a different mood after losing team leader Richie Porte from the Tour de France due to his high-speed crash on the descent of the Mont du Chat during Sunday's mountain stage.
The US-registered WorldTour team has been forced to quickly to brush off any sadness and disappointment about losing a chance at Tour de France victory and have set new goals for the remainder of the race.
Damiano Caruso will take over Porte's role as protected rider for the overall classification, while the other riders, including Greg Van Avermaet, will have total freedom to chase stage victories. Van Avermaet is now the de facto team leader due to his status as a Classics winner and Olympic champion. The likes of Nicolas Roche, Alessandro De Marchi, Stefan Kung all have the ability to win important stages in the days to come.
"We've lost our team leader and our north star after Richie crashed out. Now it's a totally different Tour your for us," Caruso told Cyclingnews.
"I've spoken to Richie on the phone. He was obviously very disappointed but the most important thing for him now is to recover quickly and fully and return. He tried to fire us up and asked us to win for him. That's what we're going to do."
The BMC used the rest day in the Dordogne to recalibrate and try to move on the losing their team leader and their major goal for the race.
"We suffered a big blow losing Richie but the rest day was a chance to reflect on our race, reset, focus on new goals and bounce back," explained Caruso, who is 16th in the general classification at 6:58.
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"I'll perhaps try to stay well placed overall for as long as possible and even try to move up. This is the Tour de France and so we have to respect the race and do as well as we can. My teammates will have more room to try to win a stage and so will I. We'll try to do as well as we can."
Every hilly stage will be like a Classic for Van Avermaet
Van Avermaet was forced to accept a secondary role as Porte and BMC targeted the yellow jersey. Now the Olympic champion can ride every hilly stage as if it's a Classic. In 2015, he beat Peter Sagan in Rodez to win his first ever Tour de France stage. This year's race finishes there on stage 14.
Stephen is the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.
