A broken collarbone has forced Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda) out of stage three of Tirreno-Adriatico, marking the Italian stage race’s second withdrawal after Michael Matthews (Rabobank) was forced to pull out after a crash at the end of stage two.
Navardauskas came down with team-mate Andrew Talansky. The American was able to finish the stage, albeit as the last man across, in a group of seven more than eleven minutes back.
Navardauskas, the Lithuanian road champion, was selected for the Garmin Tour de France team last year, but his surprise selection proved to be a wise one. He shared long pulls on the front of the peloton with David Zabriskie during the race as his team worked towards the overall team classification title.
Navardauskas was doing a similar job in the Race of the Two Seas, as well as acting as a lead-out for Tyler Farrar in the final few kilometers. The Garmin-Barracuda sprint train has struggled a little to get on track in Tirreno-Adriatico, and things will get no easier for the American squad, now a man down.
Talansky confirmed the news on his Twitter account, but indicated that the Lithuanian was handling the setback well.
“Ramunas and I went down pretty hard today, he came out with a broken collarbone but was smiling at dinner. Nothing gets him down!” Talansky wrote on his Twitter account.
“As for me, I seem to be all right, just a bit banged up.”