Fresh off his overall victory and stage win in the Eurometropole Tour (Circuit Franco-Belge), Jürgen Roelandts could have been a favourite to win today's Binche-Tournai-Binche. Instead, he crashed out of the race, ending his season the same way he started it in the Tour Down Under - "in the hospital" - he reported via Twitter.
His Lotto-Belisol team confirmed that the former Belgian champion suffered a double break in his right collarbone in a crash in the finale of the race, and is due to have surgery to repair the fractures tonight.
Roelandts lost four months of racing following his Tour Down Under crash in January. In the opening stage, he went down in the run-in to the final sprint at 70kph, fracturing his sixth cervical vertebra.
The injury meant he could not race again until May, but he wasted no time getting back to full strength. He won a stage in the Tour of Luxembourg in June, and finished third overall in the Ster ZLM Tour before heading to the Tour de France in support of triple stage winner Andre Greipel.
Roelandts then went on to finish seventh in the Olympic Games road race, and won the opening stage of l'Eurometropole Tour, keeping the race lead until the end.
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