Romain Bardet suffered a small haemorrhage following a concussion that forced him to pull out of the Tour de France on Friday, the Frenchman said on Saturday.
"An MRI in the morning revealed has confirmed a small haemorrhage following the concussion," Bardet wrote on Instagram.
The 29-year-old crashed with 87km in the 13th stage, getting back on his bike despite a bout of dizziness and lost 2:30 to overall leader Primoz Roglic, slipping down to 11th on the standings from fourth.
His AG2R-La Mondiale team announced on Friday night that he was pulling out after he was taken for an emergency scan that showed he had suffered a concussion.
Tour de France chief doctor Florence Pommerie said the nature of the sport made it almost impossible to detect a concussion on the spot.
"You're always a bit dizzy when you crash at 40 or 80kph," she told reporters.
"We didn't prevent him from racing because he was showing no clinical signs of a concussion."
Team manager Vincent Lavenu said that the 2016 Tour runner-up showed the first signs of a concussion after the stage.
"In the car that took us to Clermont (from the Puy Mary), he asked us to stop and he vomited. We already had a scan but we went straight to the hospital," he said.
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
