Australian sprinter Mark Renshaw has commented on his decision to pull out of the Commonwealth Games, saying that he didn’t want to risk any further health issues.
“Very hard choice to pull out of Comm Games Team but have to look to the future now. I could not take the risk with health after EBV this year,” he said today on Twitter.
Renshaw was referring to the case of Epstein-Barr Virus he had, which sidelined him from competition earlier this season.
He had previously detailed what he was worried about in India. “The problem is the mosquitoes and dengue fever. It's a bit of a worry,” he stated, according to the Sydney Morning Herald and other sources. “I was looking forward to [competing a the Commonwealth Games] until I came back here to Australia, and now the thought of going to India, and just the way it's been covered in Australia, it's pretty daunting.
''To be honest, now the whole British team has pulled out … the point comes where [you think] is it worth going when we are only going to be racing against India and a couple of these other countries. It's not going to be a 100 per cent strong field.''
The 27 year old has had a very solid season, netting second on stage one of the Tour de France, then taking stage four of the Tour of Denmark plus top-ten placings on three other stages. He also gained the headlines for the wrong reasons when he was disqualified from the Tour de France on July 15th. He headbutted Garmin-Transitions rider Julian Dean three times, feeling that the Kiwi was trying to block his sprint, and then cut across Dean's team-mate Tyler Farrar.
The HTC Columbia rider has been replaced on the Australian team by Michael Matthews, who showed that he could well be in the running for a big result in Delhi when he thundered to a superb victory in last week’s under 23 event at the world championships in Geelong, Australia.
The Delhi road race course is mainly flat and a bunch sprint is a strong possibility. The men’s and women’s events take place on Sunday.