His tweet from Eindhoven airport summed it up:

“Sore, sorry & back to the drawing board, again. Like with every set-back, now I’m just focusing on the future & setting some new goals.” – Simon Gerrans, 7 July.

There had been cruel blows for Simon Gerrans this season, but this one seemed the cruelest.

In a way like few can, Gerrans worked meticulously on his recovery and fitness following earlier season set backs.

He arrived at the world’s biggest race, the Tour de France, is peak condition and ready to make his mark on the 2015 season.

Unfortunately for him, and the ORICA-GreenEGDE team, it was a short-lived affair, Gerrans and many others falling in a high-speed crash in stage three.

An initially suspected fractured wrist was later confirmed.

Gerrans left the Tour with teammate Daryl Impey, who fractured his collarbone, the following morning. No doubt, it was with recovery and new goals already in his mind.

Gerrans gave an update on his personal website.

“Since I stopped the race, I travelled down to Girona. I was lucky to have Daryl for company as obviously he was on his way home too," he said. "I went and had more scans on Tuesday morning to try and get a better idea of the extent of my injury.

"Following those scans we found there was probably a little bit more to the injury than what we originally thought. There are a couple of fractures in my wrist as well as one in my hand, so at that point we decided to course an orthopedic specialist in hand surgery.

"Fortunately, through some contacts in Australia and around the world, we got onto a highly recommended surgeon in Barcelona who I visited yesterday. We have decided I am going to have surgery on my wrist, which I will have today.

The extent of the recovery time, we won’t actually know until post surgery depending on how well it has gone. At the moment they’ve given me a time frame of anywhere between three to five weeks until I’ll be back on the road. It’s a pretty big window, but we’ll have a much better idea post operation.

"We were also taking this opportunity to get the plate removed from my collarbone at the same time. Given I am going to be laid up for a while, it’s the same arm, and it needs to be removed at some point, I figured that I might as well do it at the same time.”