Rigoberto Urán ready to throw everything at the Tour de France
The Colombian feels the strain of several crashes during the opening week of the French grand tour.
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MORZINE, France (VN) — Rigoberto Urán (EF Education-EasyPost) is ready to throw the kitchen sink to salvage his Tour de France GC bid.
The Colombian is sitting outside of the top 20 in the general classification after a difficult opening week that saw him crash several times.
With the first week done and dusted, he’s now nearly 10 minutes down on the yellow jersey and a podium place is looking quite unlikely, but he’s not ready to throw in the towel.
“Everything, at the moment,” he told VeloNews when asked what he would do to try and claw back time on others. “Three minutes could be too much, but it could also be nothing because here at the Tour de France the second guy can be five minutes. It’s possible for things to change.”
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Urán showed his intentions of going all out in a bid to make up time after going into the large breakaway on stage 9.
He started the day just over three minutes behind the yellow jersey and his presence in the move meant that the peloton could not relax with UAE Team Emirates pulling all day to keep him nearby.
The breakaway was not allowed a big gap and Urán eventually cracked on the final climb up Pas de Morgins. He was caught by the peloton and was quickly dispatched, slipping back and eventually losing over six minutes to the other GC contenders.
“I tried to gain time I am not feeling super good because of the crash yesterday, and I tried today but the climb was so hard,” he said.
“The most important thing for me is to try for everything,” he said. “The morale is the most important. I know the Tour is hard and yesterday was a bad crash and I didn’t recover well. Every day the fans are here for me, and I thank everyone for the support.”
Urán was involved in a high-speed pile-up in the early part of stage 8 that caught up a lot of riders, including American Kevin Vermaerke (Team DSM), who had to leave the race. The EF education-EasyPost also suffered two falls during the Denmark grand départ.
“I feel a little bit in my elbow but, at the moment, I need to keep racing and then we will see my situation,” he said. “For me, the most important thing is that I am with my team and I can help my team we will see what happens in the next days.”
