Movistar rider Adriano Malori is in intensive care after sustaining a head injury when he crashed at the Tour de San Luis in Argentina.
The 27-year-old hit the deck hard with around 30 kilometres remaining of Friday’s Stage 5, as his bike’s front wheel reportedly got caught in a crack in the road surface while he was riding at the head of the peloton.
Around 30 riders were brought down in the crash, including Malori’s team mate, Tour de France runner-up, Nairo Quintana.
Malori was taken to the Hospital de San Luis, which said in a statement that he had sustained "multiple trauma with head injury and should remain under observation for 48 hours."
Movistar said the rider “also sustained a fracture to his right-hand collarbone as a result of the crash,” adding, “we expect to release another bulletin with precise, reliable information on Saturday.”
The Italian national time trial champion, Malori was silver medallist in that discipline behind Vasil Kiryienka of Belarus at last year’s world championships.
The stage was won by German Tivalo, riding for the Argentina national team.
Another rider from the host country, Eduardo Sepúlveda of Fortuneo-Vital Concept, leads the overall standings, 3 seconds ahead of Movistar’s Dayer Quintana.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.