Gianni Moscon abandoned Tirreno-Adriatico due to ‘feeling strange’ after crash

Gianni Moscon pulled out of Tirreno-Adriatico due to “feeling strange” after a crash earlier in the season, his sports director has said.

The Team Sky rider pulled out of the Italian stage race after stage two, having struggled with his form since a crash at the UAE Tour earlier this month.

Moscon will return home and undergo further tests, as he hopes to ride the Northern Classics in the coming weeks.

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Sky sports director Matteo Tossato told Italian newspaper La Gazzetta Dello Sport: “Unfortunately, after the crash at the UAE Tour he didn’t recover well.

“He has nothing broken but he feels strange. He says his legs always feel stiff, that they don’t loosen up while pedalling.

“We did all the checkups but that crash did something to him and we could already see it at Strade Bianche.

“Even at the [Tirreno-Adriatico] team time trial, we could see that it was not the usual Gianni.”

The 24-year-old was caught in a number of crashes in the UAE Tour, the worst of which came on stage six during the run to the Jebel Jais summit finish.

Tosatto said he came down hard on his right side after he hit a cat’s eye.

He was eating at the time of the crash and so only had one hand on the handlebars, falling while travelling at speed in the bunch.

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Tosatto added: “After that he didn’t feel right, he didn’t feel like the usual Gianni.

“He recovered but for days he had been saying something was wrong, like there was some limitation.

“We have to allow him to recover and make further checks when he returns home.”

Moscon is due to ride a full spring Classics schedule, starting with Milan-San Remo and on to the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

His Grand Tour calendar will see him ride the Giro d’Italia in support of Colombian talent Egan Bernal.