Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's Primoz Roglic has abandoned the Giro d'Italia after crashing for the third time this week.
The Slovenian slid out on a roundabout with around 100km remaining of stage 16, the toughest day of the Giro so far, which has been significantly impacted by heavy rainfall.
A former winner of the Giro in 2023, and a four-time champion of the Vuelta a Espana, he entered this Grand Tour as the pre-race favourite.
However, despite a promising early time-trial performance, Roglic was only sitting 10th in the general classification (GC) after a tough middle week. He crashed on both stage nine and 14, and was surprisingly dropped by a large peloton on Sunday's climb to Enego.
After that stage, his team questioned whether he would continue in the race.
"There is no point in hiding anymore that he doesn't feel well, that he's in pain," Red Bull's directeur sportif Christian Pomer told The Cycling Podcast, referring to his crash injuries. "We tried to downplay it a little, and it worked until today, but today we saw the truth."
Going into stage 16, Roglic trailed leader Isaac del Toro by 3.53, and admitted that he struggled to mount his bike on Monday's rest day.
He appeared to avoid any serious injuries in this latest crash, but with his overall prospects of winning disappearing up the road, and his body worn down, the decision was quickly made to enter his team car and withdraw.
Richard Carapaz, a contender for overall victory from American squad EF-Education, was also caught up in the crash, but quickly rejoined the main peloton.
Roglic has publicly stated that the Tour de France is his main target this season -- the only Grand Tour he has never won -- but he appears some distance short of race-winning form.
Another scary incident involved Italian rider Alessio Martinelli, a member of the day's breakaway, who fell and slid around 10 metres into a ravine. After being taken out on a stretcher, his VF Group-Bardiani team say the 24-year-old is conscious and has been taken to hospital.
Earlier in the day, British rider Josh Tarling, who won the stage two time-trial for the INEOS Grenadiers, also abandoned after crashing heavily into a roadside barrier.