Tour de France 2016

Jurgen Van den Broeck needs to abandon Tour de France

Team KATUSHA’s Jurgen Van den Broeck will not start any more in stage 12 of the 2016 Tour de France. Van den Broeck crashed in the beginning of stage 11 on his right shoulder. He finished the stage but afterwards an impactation fracture of the greater tuberosity of the right shoulder was diagnosed.

- It was really nervous in the beginning. I was fighting for my position in the bunch. After a left corner something went wrong for another rider. He touched my front wheel, I flipped over my bike. I did not panic immediately as initially it felt like an ordinary crash, but when I started to ride again my shoulder was hurting a lot. After the stage x-rays confirmed that the shoulder is broken. That’s a hard verdict for me. The doctors tell me the fracture needs some weeks to heal, but I will need more time to recover mentally as I had already a lot of bad luck in my career. It hurts me a lot not to be able to help Team KATUSHA in the mountains, - said an emotional Jurgen Van den Broeck.

Jurgen Van den Broeck finished 3rd and 4th Overall in Tour de France 2010 and 2012.

Photo: © Tim De Waele / Team KATUSHA