Vincenzo Nibali has been cleared to resume riding on the road a little over a week after he fractured the radius of his right wrist in a training crash. The Trek-Segafredo rider was forced to miss the Tour of the Alps due to the injury but is still hoping to start the Giro d’Italia, which gets underway on May 8.
Nibali has already been fitted with a specially-designed carbon brace that will help him train on the road as his bone heals. He was given permission to return to the road following a check-up in Lugano on Wednesday.
"It went well," Trek-Segafredo doctor Emilio Magni told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "The stitches were taken out and an assessment of the wound showed that things have developed as expected. An X-ray showed that the plates and screws were perfectly in position. Nothing had moved."
Nibali will continue to rehabilitate his injury under the supervision of physiotherapist Martino Donato in Lugano, but he can now return to training on the road after a week away, though Magni warned that he would continue to exercise caution.
"Obviously at the start, it won’t be about performance but to evaluate his feelings and to see whether – or how much – he feels pain," Magni said.
From the outset, Nibali insisted that he would "do the impossible" to line out at the Giro and he expressed guarded optimism about his prospects in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
"I have the green light to start a new phase of my recovery, the most delicate and decisive one: the road test," Nibali wrote.
Nibali hasn’t raced since he placed 35th at Milan-San Remo on March 20 and this week’s Tour of the Alps was due to provide the final touches to his preparation for the Giro. Instead, the two-time winner faces a race against time to make the Grande Partenza in Turin.
The Sicilian’s 7th place overall last October ended a sequence of six podium finishes in his previous six participations at the Giro. This time out, Trek-Segafredo intend to field a triumvirate of GC riders, with Nibali joined by Bauke Mollema and Giulio Ciccone.
La Gazzetta reports that the Trek-Segafredo squad is likely to be completed by Gianluca Brambilla, Matteo Moschetti, Jacopo Mosca, Antonio Nibali and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier.
