Miguel Ángel López has crashed out of the Giro d'Italia after a freak crash on the opening stage 1 TT today.
The Astana rider, who won a stage at the Tour de France last month but also crashed on the opening stage of that race, was taken from the site of his crash today by ambulance.
The highly fancied Colombian appeared to be changing the position of his hands on his aero bars today when he hit a rough piece of road, resulting in the bike bouncing under him.
As his bike bounced around he misplaced his hand and darted to his right, towards a crash barrier and off the road in a truly freak crash.
And while he might have hoped to jump up and dust himself down to complete his ride, his awkward fall left him with significant injuries requiring hospitalisation.
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The stage was won, as expected, by new world TT champion Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) who clocked a time of 15:24 in the mostly downhill 15.1km test into Palermo, making for an average speed of 58.83km per hour.
Ganna (24) was a significant 21 seconds ahead of the next rider, João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep), with 3rd placed Mikkel Bjerg (UAE-Team Emirates) also 21 seconds down.
Of the general classification men, Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers did by far the best ride; the 2018 Tour de France champion finishing in 4th place 23 seconds off his winning team mate.
That was 26 seconds faster than the next pink jersey contender Simon Yates (Mitchelton Scott).
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