Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard are currently sidelined from competition due to extensive injuries but injuries keep affecting Team Visma | Lease a Bike. Even if van Aert races the Giro d'Italia, the team will already start without a leader in Wilco Kelderman.
Kelderman crashed in the final day of Paris-Nice, where he was a key supporter for GC winner Matteo Jorgenson. He suffered a fractured collarbone, and his recovery has not been as fast as expected. The Dutch rider was expected to be an outsider in the modest GC field or possibly a supporter for Cian Uijtdebroeks who also hopes to contest for a strong result in the GC.
"Wilco has not yet recovered sufficiently from his collarbone fracture. Because the recovery is taking longer than expected, Wilco has decided together with the team not to start in the Giro d'Italia," Visma confirmed in a message on social media. "Koen Bouwman, who is already in the Giro team's altitude camp, will replace him. We wish Wilco a speedy recovery." Bouwman comes as a strong replacement however, off the back of a GC win at the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali.
Unfortunately for Kelderman this is just one of many injuries, the 33-year old's career has been marked by crashes. He has his own history at the Giro, where he was involved in a freak accident in 2017 alongside Geraint Thomas at the Blockhaus where the peloton collided with a motorbike. He was also a GC contender then, and abandoned with a fractured finger. This is, at the very least, the third time Kelderman suffers a fractured collarbone in his career - the others being in a training crash in 2014 and a crash at Tirreno-Adriatico back in 2018.
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