Cees Bol will not start in the twelfth stage of the Tour de France on Thursday. The Dutchman is ill, his team Astana reports. For the sprinter, heavy days were already ahead with three stages in the Pyrenees.
The 29-year-old Bol was participating in his sixth Tour. He did not come close to a stage victory in this edition. However, he did achieve two top-twenty classifications: he finished eighteenth in Laval and twentieth in Châteauroux.
After Bol’s withdrawal, Mike Teunissen is the only remaining Dutchman in Astana’s Tour selection. There are now eleven Dutch riders left in the race.
Marijn van den Berg was the first Dutch dropout in the Tour. He crashed hard in the first stage, tried for a few more days, and gave up on Monday.
The peloton faces a tough finish on the Hautacam in the twelfth stage on Thursday. The stage starts at 1:25 PM and the finish is expected around 5:30 PM.