Nairo Quintana confirms participation in the Giro d’Italia, but takes a different tack

Nairo Quintana will ‘normally’ appear at the start of the 107th Giro d’Italia in a week and a half. The Colombian will not do this as a classification rider, but as a stage hijacker. The Movistar rider made this known during the presentation of his Gran Fondo.

Will Nairo Quintana be fit in time for the Giro d’Italia? That was the question for a long time, after the Colombian had to withdraw from the Tour of the Alps due to physical problems, which would be his last race in the run-up to the Tour of Italy. The now 34-year-old climbing goat is currently staying in his home country Colombia, where he is continuing to recover from his falls in the Tour of Catalonia.

Quintana hit the asphalt twice in the Catalan stage race. He suffered no fractures from those falls, but did give up after his last slide. He appeared to be suffering from an almost complete tear of the anterior sterno-clavicular ligament in his right arm. In other words: an almost complete tear of the joint that connects the sternum to the collarbone. For that reason, he previously deleted the Tour of the Basque Country from his program.

However, his recovery is going well and Quintana has already confirmed his participation in the upcoming Tour of Italy. It has now been exactly ten years since he won the Giro. In 2017, after an exciting battle, he also finished second in the final rankings, after Tom Dumoulin, but Quintana is abandoning his ranking ambitions for the coming edition.

“The plan is to hunt for stage victories in the mountains,” Quintana reports. “I am ready to give everything of myself. We are going for it 100%.”