"I've been in a lot of pain" - Infection bringing down Giulio Ciccone's GC ambitions at La Vuelta

Giulio Ciccone won the Clásica San Sebastián and the queen stage of the Vuelta a Burgos, arriving at the Vuelta a Espana with terrific form and as one of the three highest-ranked climbers. On stage 2 he almost took a stage win ahead of Jonas Vingegaard, but ever since his ambitions have been more modest as the Lidl-Trek leader has been suffering from an infection which is affecting his performance.

“I'm in good shape, but it's no secret that I've been in a lot of pain for the past three or four days. Unfortunately, I have another infection in my buttocks," Ciccone said in words to Eurosport at the start of stage 14. Ciccone has been racing the Vuelta steadily, emerging out of the team time-trial in fifth place, losing two spots the next day in Andorra, but climbing back up to fourth in Cerler. Ever since he's dropped down to eighth in GC, and was ninth up the Alto de l'Angliru where he was not in contention for a top result, but had a strong enough performance to keep his ambitions of a podium of Top5 not out of the picture.

As it stands, Ciccone is eighth in the overall, overtaking Torstein Traeen in this last summit finish. He is 2:38 minutes away from Tom Pidcock who is in third place, but the gap to fourth place Jai Hindley is only of 1:54 minutes. With only one high mountain stage tackled thus far, and three remaining, a lot can still change and if the Italian's health improves, he can still improve quite a lot on his current position.

However, it is a situation that causes quite a lot of annoyance to the 30-year old, who is seeing yet another Grand Tour stint hampered by health issues. This past May, he abandoned the Giro d'Italia after a crash on stage 14 after showing incredible form in the weeks leading up to it. In previous years, on several occasions Ciccone has had to forfeit or end his participation in Grand Tours due to crashes or other issues.

"Bothers me a lot when I'm cycling. We are working with the team to solve this problem as quickly as possible, because I am in good shape. The problems started in the last few days, partly due to the rain on day 9.”