• Cycling

Illness and injury add to Wiggins' misfortune

Sir Bradley Wiggins suffered a lot of swelling to his right knee after crashing in the Tour de Suisse © Getty Images

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Sir Bradley Wiggins has endured further misery following his likely Tour de France shun after the Brit was forced to pull out of the Tour de Suisse with a combination of injury and illness.

Wiggins, who missed Le Tour last year after winning the event in 2012, recently said he was "gutted" to miss out on a chance to reclaim the yellow jersey from Team Sky team-mate Chris Froome.

The 34-year-old's luck took a turn for the worse in Switzerland after a crash 28 kilometres from the finish of Tuesday's stage four left him with no option but to withdraw.

"Ironically, I was the last man in the peloton, trying to stay out of trouble when it happened," Wiggins told Team Sky's official website. "They all slammed on the brakes ahead of me but there was another rider riding full gas who rode straight into the back of me.

"I've got quite a lot of swelling on the left-hand side of my right knee. It's one of those things, I've been pretty fortunate this year with crashes. I probably could have started today but it's best to play it safe and come home now. I really want to try to be ready for the [British] Nationals next Thursday so I didn't want to jeopardise that for the sake of pushing on and potentially doing more damage.

"Friday's time trial had been my main goal for the Tour de Suisse, but I'd never have been 100% for it. I've also been struggling with a chest infection this week, which affected my ride on stage one and that put me back a bit so I wouldn't have been able to perform at my best there anyway.

"The plan is to get home today, have 24 hours off the bike and then I'll be good to go again and finalise my preparations for Wales next week."

Team doctor Steve Baynes said: "Alongside the team's physio, Nathan Thomas, I assessed Bradley last night, and again this morning. He's suffered some pretty bad bruising on the left side of his right thigh muscle which is restricting his movement on the bike and obviously causing him discomfort.

"That's going to require some treatment so, having spoken to Brad, we felt the best plan of action would be to withdraw him from the race and fly him back to the UK."

It was recently announced Wiggins will race for England at this summer's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

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