Egan Bernal abandons Criterium du Dauphine before Stage 4

Egan Bernal didn’t show up to take the start in stage 4 of the Criterium du Dauphine due to back injury.

“He’s got a bit of a bad back and the best thing for him is to just take it easy”, said Geraint Thomas. “It’s such a short turn around to the Tour that it’s important he gets it 100 per cent right and be good then. I don’t think it’s a major issue, it’s just better to be on the  side of caution. He’s had two races before this as well, so he’s got the racing that he needs. It’s just about making sure that everything is 100 per cent there and that there are no issues.”

The 2019 Tour de France winner suffered on stage 3 losing time on his GC rivals. His teammate Pavel Sivakov said after the stage that Bernal “wasn’t feeling super”.

“I don’t think that this changes much for us”, said Primoz Roglic. “We need to focus on our work and try to be the best”.

“I’m looking forward to this stage. We’ll still see a hard race, it’s not everything on Egan because we have a lot of really strong guys. It’s going to be hard racing. I’m not sure what will happen today but it will definitely be hard racing. There are mountains from the beginning but for us, we want to have control and a good situation. We’ll try and focus on that.”

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