UAE’s injury nightmare goes on as Baroncini becomes the latest name on a grim list

UAE’s injury list was already long before the weekend. Now Filippo Baroncini has been added to it. The Italian crashed at Tro Bro Léon and, according to team medical director Dr Adrian Rotunno, suffered a suspected injury to his left clavicle or acromioclavicular joint. 

He will be assessed for surgery in Brussels before returning home to begin another period of rehabilitation under UAE’s medical staff.

For most riders, that would be a bitter setback. For Baroncini, it lands with a heavier weight.

Only last year, the 25-year-old was involved in a horror crash at the Tour of Poland that nearly ended far more than his season. On a fast descent in stage three, Baroncini lost control in a corner he later said was covered with gravel and hit a wall. 

The aftermath was brutal. He suffered a broken jaw, a crushed nose and came within millimetres of losing his sight. He later said his sunglasses had saved his eyes.

His memories of the day remain raw. Baroncini recalled lying for 45 minutes in a stationary ambulance, despite the severity of his injuries, before an Ineos team doctor pushed for him to be taken to hospital. He was placed in a medically induced coma, flown from Poland to Italy and underwent an eleven hour operation on his jaw and face. 

His new injury is the latest chapter in a season that has become unusually cruel for UAE. What began in January at the Santos Tour Down Under has followed the team through the spring and into the Giro d’Italia. 

In Australia, Jhonatan Narváez suffered stable compression fractures in his thoracic vertebrae, while Vegard Stake Laengen was forced out with a rib problem. Mikkel Bjerg and Jay Vine were then involved in a freak incident with a kangaroo. 

Bjerg was left with an acromioclavicular dislocation and a broken hand. Vine completed the race and won overall, only for later checks to reveal a fractured scaphoid in his left wrist.

The list kept growing. Tim Wellens broke his collarbone at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, costing him a cobbled classics campaign in which he was expected to be central. Pablo Torres required surgery for knee problems. João Almeida, pencilled in as UAE’s Giro leader, was derailed by illness and forced out of his first major target of the year. Isaac del Toro crashed out of Itzulia with a muscle tear in his right thigh, ending not only his Basque Country campaign but also his Ardennes programme.

Then came the Giro. A mass crash on stage two forced Adam Yates, Jay Vine and Marc Soler to abandon. Vine suffered concussion and a fractured elbow. Soler was diagnosed with a pelvic fracture. Yates, initially cleared to continue, later developed delayed concussion symptoms and was also withdrawn.

Baroncini is now added to that same grim roll call.

For UAE's sports manager Joxean Fernández Matxín, the problem is not only the number of riders missing, but the quality of those names. “There have been 14 riders, plus five from the development team,” he said to Marca before the Giro. “And five of them were riders who could win races.”

Despite all the bad luck, UAE are still the most successful team of 2026 with 28 wins, ahead of Netcompany Ineos on 19. But an improvement on their record-breaking 2025 campaign, when they claimed 95 victories, already seems out of reach.