Today's stage in Paris-Nice ended badly for 2008 winner Alberto Contador. At 3 kilometers to go he was brought down hitting the pavement hard and came away with an injured leg. Contador said the hit on his left thigh causes him concern about whether he will have to abandon the French race.
“The hit on my leg worries me," he explained, "I hope I can continue in the race tomorrow.”
He said the crash happened suddenly and there wasn't anything he could do to avoid the incident.
“It happened in a split second,” said Contador. “I was on the left riding and everything seemed normal when someone hooked onto me and pulled me to the left. My front wheel was completely broken and I've taken a good hit”.
Contador said his Astana teammate Gorazd Štangelj quickly gave him his bike so he would have a chance to catch the charging peloton. He was able to latch onto the second group, but afterwards the the judges said that the fall happened within the final kilometers, so he would have gotten the same time as the group he was in at the time of his crash regardless.
“The problem is the blow to the muscle, which is what may affect my performance, but I hope to start tomorrow.”
He said it was a shame for his team to have missed the split, "especially for my team," he continued, "because all day they had been at the front and had been very attentive the whole day.”
Contador concluded, “[I will] analyze the situation in the overall, but the truth is that I don't care about the 17 seconds the the front group gained, I'm only concerned with the consequences of my fall. It would have been better not to have lost time, but it's more important to see how I recover.”