"He looks like a mummy"

A nasty-looking crash took Gorka Izagirre out of Wednesday's Fleche Wallonne. The 24-year-old escaped serious injury, but is quite banged up at the moment and will be forced to sit out Sunday's big rendezvous: Liège-Bastogne-Liège. According to directeur sportif Gorka Gerrikagoitia, he's looking like everything but a bike rider.

"He's entire body is bruised and he's got bandages all over the place. He looks like mummy! It's been a while since I last saw such a heavy crash", the former Euskaltel-pro told el Diario Vasco.

The oldest of the Izagirre brothers crashed at heavy speed - but incredibly came away from the incident without any fractures whatsoever.

"It happened with 38 kilometres to go, at approximately 60 km/h. The road was quite dangerous, and he looked quite bad after the crash. He hit his shoulder, his face, his knees, his hands, his arms, both sides... I think he virtually hit every single body part. We originally thought of taking him to the hospital, but we eventually dropped that idea."

He added: "He's done with his first part of the season now. He was scheduled to return to racing in May at the Tour of Bavaria, and he'll do so if he's healed by then, but he'll take it easy in that race. After that, he'll head to the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France".