Charlie Quarterman will retire at the end of the season

Charlie Quarterman, one of the breakaway stars of this year’s Giro d’Italia, is set to retire from professional cycling at the end of the current season in part due to the stress of the sport's contract uncertainty.

"There's not really a headline reason why," Quarterman told CyclingWeekly when asked why he’s made the decision to step away from the sport. "It's not one particular health issue, it's not a complete loss of love for cycling, it's kind of a whole load of things that have been weighing me down probably since I left Trek when I did but I'm in a good place now, I'm happy to stop, and it's on my terms."

"At the Tour de Poitou de Charentes at the end of August the first day was like 200 kilometres and it was about 40 degrees average," he explained. "I went so deep that after crossing the line, in the next two hours, I nearly fainted twice and ended up being sick about 10 times, and I was in hospital at about three in the morning. It's not the first time I'd been in hospital for heatstroke, but it was definitely the worst. It took at least a week or two to recover. It was a really extreme thing, and a really extreme case of it."

"I'm ready for a new challenge and to just enjoy the sport for what it is from the outside. I'm actually really loving my economics degree that I'm currently doing in France… the idea of working in that sector one day really excites me," Quarterman concludes.