Giulio Ciccone has abandoned the Giro d'Italia after crashing in the last 30km of stage 17 along with multiple other riders.
Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) was flying high in the overall standings in sixth place but was caught in the crash, which also forced Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) out of the race due to his injuries.
Italian climber Ciccone did actually sign on for stage 18 on Thursday morning (May 27) but then underwent another assessment by the team's doctor who decided it was too much of a risk to let him race.
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In a tweet the team said: "Unfortunately Giulio Ciccone won’t start stage 18. The rider had a hard night with a fever. He initially signed his presence at the podium but, after a further evaluation by team doctor, considering his heavily weakened state, the team decided to stop him to safeguard his health."
Ciccone wasn't the only Trek rider to go down in that crash though as Vincenzo Nibali and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier also suffered nasty injuries but did start the stage.
Both riders suffered multiple contusions and abrasions with Nibali having an x-ray to check for fractures, which they did not find.
Ciccone was putting in an amazing Giro d'Italia. He came into the stage looking for stage wins alongside Bauke Mollema with Nibali aiming for the GC even with a fracture to his wrist.
It then became clear that Ciccone was in very strong form, being able to follow the attacks of the likes of Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), coming a close second on stage nine to Campo Felice.
He did make it back to the main bunch of GC riders before the final climb of Sega di Ala on stage 17 but lost touch pretty quickly along with Russian rider, Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) before losing over six minutes to Bernal and seven minutes to Yates.
Nick Schultz (BikeExchange) was sat in 18th place and was the main domestique for Simon Yates, was also involved in the crash with team-mate Mikel Nieve. Schultz did not start stage 18 due to his injuries. He suffered a fracture of the 5th metacarpal on his left hand.
