Sicard faces prolonged lay-off

Romain Sicard is still some way off making a return to competition, Igor González de Galdeano told Biciciclismo.com earlier today. The former Tour de l'Avenir winner has been struggling with a niggling knee injury for virtually the whole season, originally thought to be caused by a change of shoes in the lead-up to the 2011 campaign. As it turns out the shoes weren't causing the problem after all; a crash in training back in December has led to one of the Frenchman's legs being considerably weaker than the other as his body tried to compensate for the injury by slightly altering his pedal-stroke. He's struggling to rediscover his characteristic fluent way of turning those pedals, but, now that the cause of the troubles has been identified, Galdeano expects Sicard to be back in training in 10 to 15 days. It'll be a while before he'll resume competition, though, but I wouldn't be surprised if he pins on a start-number again sometime in early August. It's thought he might aim for a late-season flourish in the Vuelta later that same month.