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Team Sky suffered its first major setback at this year's 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tour de France when 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Kanstantsin Siutsou abandoned the race after crashing 140km into the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:stage to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The Belarussian was taken to hospital in Boulogne, where an x-raꦦy revealed he had a fracture in the tibia bone of his left leg. Team director Sean Yates describ𒁃ed losing Siutsou as "a major blow because he's an integral part of the team".

"There was a massive pile-up and he was at the botto𝓡m of it," said Yates. "It's been a stressful day. Every day at the Tour is stressful, but days like this, when you've🧸 got loads of crashes and you've got to stop and change bikes, are particularly bad."

Yates said that the seven riders now left to support 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Bradley Wiggins' challenge for the yellow jersey wi🥃ll have to share Siutsou's duties between them. "We've got a lot of strong guys, and we'll just have to deal with it. It won't impact on the tactics because the tactic is simply to win the race and that means Bradley has to be up there with the best and ride fantastic time trials. It will just impac𝔉t on the workload of the other seven members of the team."

Asked whether that will mean 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Mark Cavendish t♚aking on some of those duties, Yates said, "Yes, that does mean we will see Mark getting bottles and so on. I'm sur♌e he won't be allergic to that. He's always a great teammate."

Team boss Dave Brailsford gave some more detail about Siutsou's precise role within the team. "He's a versatile rider, a very strong rider, he's on♊e of the key worke💛rs in the team, he does a lot of work getting bottles and so on, and he works very well in the mountains. On the mountain stages, he's there on the first couple of mountains. Thankfully we've got a lot of strength in depth in the mountains so I'm not sure we'll suffer too much there," he said.

Brailsford was sanguine about the loss of a key team member. "I think you have to take incidents like this on the chin. There's an element of risk in what they do. The Tour de France is inherently risky, and it's a question of 🌊staying upright. Bradley's done that again today, though. He's got through. It's another ജboxed ticked and that's the way you've got to approach it.

"I feel neutral about the day as a whole. I think events have balanced themselves out. What I saw today is that Mick Rogers has got good legs, Froo🔜mey's got good legs, Eddy's certainly got good legs and Brad's got good legs. It's a disappointment to lose Kosta but it's not the end of the world either."