British national champion Fred Wright is battling on through the latter stages of the 2026 Tour de France with several injuries, including a broken bone in his left hand.
A heavy crash on stage 17 saw the Pinarello Q36.5 rider hit the tarmac hard, along with fellow teammate, Tom Pidcock.
The crash happened during the early stages of a fast and often chaotic stage on Wednesday. “The road sort of narrowed, randomly, and there was a bit of raised pavement that wasn’t signalled or anything,” Wright told us before starting stage 18. “And yeah, I hit it coming on the side with full speed, and it took me out. It should be pointed out, to be honest – it caused a big crash.”
Wright and his Pinarello Q36.5 teammates had stages 17 and 18 firmly in their sights as days to launch an attack, but the crash and its repercussions have dealt their best laid plans a serious knockback.
Arriving with one knee bandaged and nursing a suspected break in his left hand, Wright revealed he had spent hours in hospital instead of getting valuable rest before today’s tough mountain stage.
“I thought I fell alright, but my hand was really sore and I had scans on it yesterday,” Wright continued. “I’ve broken something. It’s a small bone on my finger. It looks like it’s broken.”
Despite the injury, Wright is determined to continue. “It’s manageable,” he told Cycling Weekly. We are going to get ourselves to Paris.”
Nevertheless, the disappointment is palpable: “Yesterday was a real shame. The goal was to be aggressive and be up there. And looking at the way the move was, I think, without the crash, I feel like I would have been there. I’ll see how I fare today, but yesterday and today, were the days we had to try and be aggressive, and, yeah… in the end I aggressively hit the floor, unfortunately.”
Wright had been looking forward to getting his national champion’s jersey a bit more airplay: “I’d have hoped to have showed it up a bit more, to be honest. So maybe I’ll try and show it off a bit today, but yeah, I’m not sure how much is possible, because I didn’t have the best sleep last night.
“Obviously, being in the hospital, getting the CT scans – it’s not it’s not ideal prep. So now it’s on to three horrible mountain days, but yeah, I should be alright.”
Wright finished stage 18 156th, 34:13 behind stage winner Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), but comfortably inside the time cut.
