Having suffered from bronchitis, Rui Costa has not had the Tour de France he was hoping for. The world champion has now been diagnosed with pneumonia and in order not to compromise the rest of his season, he abandoned the race earlier today, claiming that he felt like a truck had hit him.

Rui Costa wasn't in Carcassone this morning for the start of the 16th stage of this year's Tour de France.

The world champion, 13th in the overall standings, was forced to retire after an X-ray examination, carried out on the rest day at a clinic in Pezenas, showed an outbreak of pneumonia.

For the past week, Rui Costa has been suffering from bronchitis which was held in a stable phase after antibiotic therapy.

On the rest day however, the world champion woke up to a worse feeling than the past and a general state of fatigue. Accompanied by Dr. Beltemacchi, doctor of Team Lampre-MERIDA, Rui Costa was subjected to various tests and X-rays which led to the diagnosis and forced the doctor to take the decision for Costa not to continue in this years Tour de France.
 

"Yesterday, during the rest, day, I did a light training session but, when I came back to the team hotel, I had bad feelings and I started having a temperature and suffering from pain in my muscles," he said. "I went to hospital and X-ray examination showed an outbreak of pneumonia.

"I wanted to wait until this morning in order to evaluate my condition, but today my health situation had not changed. I’m feeling even worse, as if a truck has hit me. Luckily, also thanks to Doctor Beltemacchi, we could understand the seriousness of the situation in time.

"I would have liked to go on in the Tour de France, in order to honor such an important race and to try to give satisfactions to my team and my fans, but it was necessary to quit the race in order to avoid even more serious health problems."