The Italian veteran Ivan Basso, a two-times Giro d’Italia winner and once a great rival of Lance Armstrong, has announced that he has cancer in his left testicle and that he will be withdrawing from the Tour de France.
A visibly shaken Basso said he felt pain in his left testicle after a crash in stage five and a medical check later revealed the cancer. “Unfortunately I have a bad announcement. I have a small cancer in my left testicle, so you can understand that I have to go back to Italy. We discovered this just two hours ago,” he said.
The departure of Basso, who will return home to Italy for further tests, is a blow both personally and professionally to the Tinkoff Saxo Bank team leader, Alberto Contador. The Spaniard, his voice cracking with emotion, put his arm around Basso and said the news was “hard for me”. He said he had ridden approximately 120 of 180 days with Basso this season in training.
Contador said he would do his best to honour Basso by winning the Tour: “You can be sure that we will fight for the yellow [jersey] to bring him the yellow in Paris.”
The Tinkoff Saxo Bank team then cut short its news conference on the race’s rest day Monday, saying that it was no time to be talking about the race after the news about Basso.
