Illness rules Bilbao out of planned final Tour appeance
In his final season as a professional rider, Pello Bilbao has been ruled out of the Tour de France due to a viral infection.
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Pello Bilbao has been ruled out of a planned final participation at the Tour de France. Bahrain Victorious announced on Thursday that the Basque will miss the race due to a viral infection he picked up at the recent Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
“Pello will now take a short period to fully recover before beginning preparations for his objectives later in the season,” the team said in a statement.
Bilbao confirmed in April that 2026 would be his final season in the professional peloton. He made the announcement ahead of the final stage of his home race, Itzulia Basque Country.
The 36-year-old lined out at the Tour on five occasions, and he placed sixth overall in 2023, when he also won a stage into Issoire. He dedicated the victory to his friend and teammate Gino Mäder, who died following a crash at the Tour de Suisse the previous month.
A professional since 2011, Bilbao has spent the last six seasons of his career at Bahrain, and he has been a reliable performer throughout his tenure at the team, taking fifth overall at the Giro d’Italia in both 2020 and 2022, as well as three successive podium finishes at the UAE Tour.
Bilbao’s results this season included sixth overall at Itzulia Basque Country and sixth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He is expected to race on home roads at the Donostia San Sebastian Klasikoa and the Circuito de Getxo, but the remainder of his programme has not been established.
Bahrain Victorious have yet to announce their full Tour line-up, but Lenny Martinez and Antonio Tiberi are set to carry the team’s general classification aspirations in France, while Matej Mohoric is also expected to feature.
Martinez warmed up for the Tour with second place behind Tadej Pogacar on the toughest stage of the Tour de Suisse, when he was caught and passed by the world champion in the final kilometre of the climb to Villars-sur-Ollon.
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