Fabian Cancellara quits the Tour de France 2012
Fabian Cancellara was the only cyclist who brought a ray of hope for the Luxembourg side, Team RadioShack-Nissan, after his remarkable performance at the Tour de France 2012.
The cyclist led his side right from the front and succeeded during the opening 6.4 kilometre Individual Time Trial stage of the race.
He held on to the yellow jersey for seven consecutive days before Bradley Wiggins took over the general classifications at the seventh stage of the Tour.
Fabian was dropped down to the 52nd overall position after the stage 10 classification and has now decided to quit the Tour to ensure his best form for the 2012 Olympic Games.
Team RadioShack-Nissan is missing the services of the its major overall classifications contender, Andy Schleck at the Tour since his knee injury earlier in May.
Fabian also had some fitness issues earlier on the season but recovered just in time for the Tour de France.
While stating on his exit from the Tour, he cited, "The decision to go back home is harder than you might expect. Up to now the team has had a very good Tour de France".
“We won a stage, had the yellow jersey for more than a week, we lead the team’s classification and we have four riders in the top 20 of the GC”.
“Most of all, we could show the cycling world that we are not just a group of nine strong individual riders, but a real team”.
It is pretty, “hard to abandon here. On the other hand, all of my teammates and directors understand and agree with my decision”.
The leadership duties have now been transferred to Haimar Zubeldia Agirre, Maxime Monfort and Andreas Kloden.
The trio is within the top 15 cyclists after the stage 10 classifications with last year’s podium finisher, Frank Schleck holding the 16th position.
Schleck has already hinted that he is not racing for an overall victory mainly because he has already covered too many kilometres during the first half of the season.
Frank was replaced with Fabian Cancellara during the Giro d’Italia and he was also amongst the final team’s squad for the Tour de Suisse.
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