Domenico Pozzovivo has revealed that the crash he sustained earlier this week while training on the Stelvio was caused by a cat.

"I was descending towards Malles, on a long, steep straight, at 70kph," Pozzovivo told Gazzetta dello Sport. "I saw a cat coming from the left-hand side of the road, out of the grass. Let's say that we looked one another in the eyes. I tried to avoid him but he bumped my front wheel.”

"The bike went flying and he ran off. I slid for twenty metres on the left side of my body and I finished up against the guard rail. I could see where I was going and I change direction. I curled up but I hit the guardrail with my right leg, just under the knee."

Pozzovivo sustained a fractured tibia and fibia and he has been forced to prematurely end his season. He was due to compete at both the Vuelta a Burgos and Vuelta a Espana this month.

Pozzovivo was conscious throughout his fall, and after a failed bid to attract the attention of mushroom pickers in a nearby wood, he devised an ad hoc support for his leg and called his father, who had been due to motor-pace him for the final hour of his ride.

"I took my helmet off and I managed to put it under my leg to support it," said Pozzovivo. "I called my father on my mobile phone and he came within ten minutes with the ambulance and they brought me to Silandro."

"Fortunately it’s a compound fracture, so I could even not have an operation," he explained. "They’ve put a light cast on it, but I can’t spend months like that, so I’ve decided to have the operation."

Pozzovivo was fifth overall at this ear’s Giro despite being ill in the final week and he was hoping to build on sixth overall at his Vuelta a Espana debut last year.

"In Spain I wouldn’t have been content just with a top five place. I was aiming for the podium," he said.

He was also due to play a key role for Davide Cassani’s national team to try to help Vincenzo Nibali win the Rainbow Jersey in Ponferrada.

"My season is over, what bad luck," Pozzovivo said. "Nibali as leader of the national team was great news for me, I would have been very useful to Cassani to make the race hard, like he wants it to be. It’s a shame."