Alberto Contador crashed in today's stage nine of the Tour de France to Saint Flour, his third fall in this year's race. The Spaniard is starting to feel the effects of it, complaining about knee pain after the stage.
Contador's handlebar got tangled up in the saddle of Vladimir Karpets. "It was an accident," said Contador. "The longer the stage went on the more pain I felt in my right knee." Contador already crashed twice in stage five. "I am a little bit concerned now, because the last couple of days I had already pain in in my right knee."
The new fall aggravated the knee even more. "Now it was more in the interior." To Contador's benefit - and to many others in the peloton - tomorrow is a rest day. "I hope that between today and tomorrow I can recover, with a lot of ice." Contador is happy that the first week is over. "It is good to have the rest day, because the inflammation is really large and now I can relax a little. "
Contador was also still under the impression of the tough crash at kilometer 100, that especially involved his former teammate Alexander Vinokourov. The Spaniard himself has not had much luck during the Tour so far, losing over a minute to the main favorites when he was caught behind a crash in stage one. "It hasn't been my Tour. It is a difficult race, full of mishaps and bad luck. But you have to stay optimistic. There is still a lot of road left, and I have to recover as quickly as possible before the stages in the Pyrenees."
For Contador, the many crashes were a logical consequence of the route chose by the Tour de France organizers. "We had a Tour with narrower roads than usual, maybe because we went through the north. Also, the rain had its say in the crashes."
Contador described the big crash of today that put an end to the Tour for Vinokourov, David Zabriskie and Jurgen van den Broeck. "We descended at high speed and the turn was barely visible. I saw a rider go down and I just hope that everybody is ok and that they recover quickly."
Contador's crash today was in part caused by external factors. "There were spectators on the road and I hit some. I had the bad luck to bang my knee with some part of my bicycle and I had pain the whole stage."