Danny Pate, Elia Viviani and Luke Rowe all crashed at 60kph on Saturday while riding reconnaissance over the team time trial course. Viviani sustained a knee injury, while Pate and Rowe all lost skin in the fall.
Viviani was given a 50-50 chance of riding by race coach Rod Ellingworth last night, and he told Cyclingnews that a final decision would be made on Sunday morning.
Ellingworth confirmed via text this morning that all six Team Sky riders would at least take to the start line, although the full extent of Viviani’s knee problem is still unknown. Luke Rowe apparently espcaped with the least amount of damage, having landed on Pate, with the American first to fall after he hit a pothole on the course.
The rest of the team are made up of Ian Stannard, Salvatore Puccio and Vasil Kiryienka. The team did not bring a substitute rider to the event.
"This certainly compromises our race for sure," Ellingworth told Cyclingnews on Saturday. "There are a lot of holes on the road and they have paint on them but at 60kph, and with such bright sunlight they just might not have seen it. Viviani of course has ambitions for the road race so that’s a concern for him. He's hit his knee badly."
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Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
