Valiant Knox Battles Injury To Complete Vuelta

Cumbrian tells Vern Pitt how he almost quit after crashing on stage 19

James Knox put in the most gutsy ride of his young career to stay in the Vuelta a España during a day when he felt “destroyed” from three weeks of hard racing and a serious crash.

Knox came out of the Vuelta’s second rest day in eighth place on GC after some hard days of racing when he hauled himself up the classification through getting into the break, and even came close to contesting a stage win.

There were just two mountain tests for the Cumbrian climber to survive to make it to Madrid and claim a top 10 in his first Grand Tour finish. But a hard crash on a descent on what should have been an innocuous transition stage left him bloodied and bruised.

“I was in hospital for a couple of hours getting checked,” he said. “I got more or less the all clear to start the next day. It looked like there was maybe a little bit of a fracture in my elbow, but nothing that I couldn’t deal with riding the bike. So I just got on with it. And my knee was swollen and painful but actually loosened up during the next day.”