Mikel Landa came down hard in the closing stages of the fifth day of the Giro d'Italia 2021 and stayed down after hitting a race official who was stood in front of a traffic island.
Landa (Bahrain-Victorious) came down with three other riders including stage four winner and the mountains jersey wearer, Joe Dombrowski (UAE Team Emirates) who managed to get back onto his bike and finish, albeit looking rather beaten up.
The Spanish rider was on the right side of the road with his team-mates around him but Dombrowski collided with the race official in front of the padding that was just ahead of the traffic island.
The American rider then got bounced out into the rest of the riders clipping Landa who then went crashing down onto the road.
Images have since surfaced that Landa has been taken away to hospital in an ambulance, confirming that the rider from the Basque Country is out of the Giro d'Italia 2021.
It was a very nervous day with a completely pan-flat stage that spent the vast majority of the stage on an almost arrow-straight road. In the closing 30km, the roads got a lot more technical with road furniture and tight bends.
Landa looked in fine form during stage four where he was the first of the pre-race favourites to go on the attack before finishing in the front favourites group.
Bahrain Victorious sports director, Franco Pellizotti said after the stage: "Unfortunately that’s part of the race. Our leader crashed. Those difficult final kilometres of the race were where he went down, of course, it was really bad.
"We don’t know yet what happened or how it happened. There was that island in the middle, maybe colliding with someone in the road as well.
"Landa was in great condition and well our Giro still goes on. Pello, Caruso two fantastic riders. It’ll change but we’ll see. We’re here to do well and we’re going to still try and do that."
More to follow
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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