By Tim Maloney, European Editor in Marostica
Before Thursday's mountainous Stage 11, Cyclingnews spoke to Discovery Channel team director Sean Yates about Tom Danielson, who did not start Stage 10 due to an inflamed knee. With his left knee taped for extra support prior to Stage 9 in Firenze, a disappointed Danielson told Cyclingnews that "I've been riding in pain this Giro. I don't know what happened..."
Yates provided an explanation: "Tom was having pain in his left knee and on the Giro rest day Tuesday, and our team physician Dr. Daniele took him to a hospital in Rimini to have an MRI. Basically, Tom couldn't pedal without pain. He said he had some knee pain after winning the mountain stage in Georgia, and then it went away. But with the hard racing in the Giro, it came back."
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"Tom's MRI scan showed that he had inflammation under the knee which was pushing his kneecap up and stretching out the joint," Yates went on to reveal.
"It was nothing that severe, so we sent Tom home. It's not something where Tom will have to have an operation, but he'll have to rest it and then figure out why it happened. Tom is depressed to have this happen now, because his role was to help Paolo [Savoldelli] on mountain stages without any pressure for an overall result. So it's bad news for him. Tom is doing the Vuelta a España, but he wanted to test himself in the high mountains at this Giro."
At this stage, Danielson will consult some knee specialists and hope to heal his injury to comeback for the Vuelta in September.
