Lotto hope Roelandts returns soon
Belgian team Lotto-Belisol said on Friday they hope Jurgen Roelandts returns to competition in time for the one-day classics after injuring his neck at the Tour Down Under.
Roelandts got caught up in a 15-rider spill on the first stage of the season's opening WorldTour event on Tuesday, breaking a vertebra at the back of his neck.
Expected to be out for at least six weeks, the Belgian cyclist's absence has upset the Lotto team's plans to make an impact on the one-day classics which begin at the end of March.
Roelandts is a key lead-out man in the "train" which helps deliver the team's main sprinter, German Andre Greipel, to the finish line of the world's biggest races in the best position possible.
Lotto hope Roelandts returns for Tirreno-Adriatico -- an Italian stage race in March, which is a warm-up for the Milan-SanRemo one-day classic later that month, one of Greipel's major objectives.
The team's sports director Herman Frison conceded Roelandts's absence was a setback.
"He's a young, strong rider who we hoped would do well in the classics. And he's good on the cobblestones, so this is quite a setback for us," he said.
"The hospital told us that for normal people it is a 12-week recovery period for a broken neck vertebra, but riders are not normal people. Hopefully it will be closer to six weeks.
"I hope after three weeks he'll be on the (training) rollers and we hope to have him back competing at Tirreno-Adriatico (on March 7-13)."
Greipel's second stage win on the race Wednesday helped lift Roelandts's spirits.
When he returned from the Royal Adelaide Hospital hours later wearing a neck brace the team celebrated by accepting his sole wish -- to go and eat ice cream.
On Friday, former two-time champion Greipel lost the Tour Down Under lead to Swiss Martin Kohler (BMC) after trailing home over seven minutes off the pace.
It ended Greipel's hopes of winning the race for a third time, but losing Roelandts is a far bigger blow for the team's season as a whole.
"It's a setback losing Jurgen because we had worked a lot together at a recent training camp in Spain, and he was doing good lead-outs for me," the German, who has won two stages and the pre-race criterium this year, told AFP.