Craig Lewis is facing a setback to his season, with the American rider facing an undetermined break from racing after crashing and fracturing his right elbow on Wednesday.
The Champion System rider fell on some cobbles during the Brabantse Pijl event, suffering the injury. As a result he has been placed in a 90 degree cast, thus making it very difficult to exercise.
“A crash happened to the left of me – maybe somebody overlapped a wheel or something,” he explained today. “Gerald Ciolek went over the handlebars into me and I went over him. Everybody else landed on the pavement, but I landed on this one little stretch of cobblestones off the side of the road.”
The double national under 23 champion has previously faced a number of injuries in his career. During the 2004 Tour de Georgia he suffered more than forty fractures when he was hit by a car. Two years ago he and then-HTC Highroad team-mate Marco Pinotti crashed in the Giro d’Italia, with Lewis breaking his left femur.
Unsurprisingly he’s frustrated, although he’s looking for a bright side to things. “My whole spring is a wash now. At least I can be fresh coming into the summer and fall and hopefully will be able to show myself then,” he said.
The 27 year old had been due to start the Giro del Trentino. Team manager Ed Beamon says his absence is a setback for the team. “It's a pretty big bummer because he was an important guy for Trentino and a really important guy for the Amgen Tour of California,” he stated.
Meanwhile team-mate Bobbie Traksel will miss this weekend’s Tour du Finistère and Tro-Bro Léon in France after he underwent an operation in recent days. He has been suffering pain in his right knee since earlier this year and while that didn’t prevent him netting the most aggressive rider award in the Tour of Oman plus third on a stage of the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, he had to submit himself to arthroscopic surgery.
“I had already had a few weeks of problems with my right knee and the most important part of the spring was over,” he said. “It was a choice between surgery now or after the season. But to put it off any longer would have meant more problems and pain.”
According to Beamon, he hopes that the 31 year old Dutchman can return for the Four Days of Dunkirk in early May. As is the case with Lewis, Traksel’s absence will reduce the strength of the team as he is an important rider.
“It is disappointing because he ends up missing the races that are most important to him,” said Beamon. “This is especially tough because it is the part of the season where the weather really favours a guy like him.”
The team’s Giro del Trentino lineup will comprise Chad Beyer, Chris Butler, Gregor Gazvoda and Adiq Othman, as well as three national champions; these are the Korean road race title holder Chan Jia Jang, Japanese TT champ Ryota Nishizono and the Chinese road race gold medallist Gang Xu. Lewis’ place will go to wither Ryan Roth or Kin San Wu.
The team will not have a replacement for Traksel in the French events. The riders for those races will be Roth, Wu, Clinton Avery, Matthias Friedemann, Mart Ojavee, Fabian Schnaidt and Wang Yip Tang.