Movistar are 'burning out' Quintana, father claims

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Luis Quintana, father of Nairo Quintana, has blasted Movistar, saying that they are "burning out" the Colombian, having made him ride both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France this year.

"We Colombians are protesting because they are burning out Nairo," he told noticias.caracroltv.com, after stage 12.

"He should not have ride the Giro if he was going to ride the Tour," Luis Quintana said, insinuating that the team forced him to try the double.

Quintana won the Giro in 2014 and rode the Tour in 2015 and 2016, where he finished second and third. Quintana held the lead in this year's Giro for several stages but lost the race to Sunweb’s Tom Dumoulin in the closing time trial.

"It's a matter of lack of organization by Movistar," Luis Quintana said. "It seems that they were learning because that is not the way to run a Tour, they took the cyclists to a training camp. It seems that Eusebio (Unzué) has forgotten after all.”

Quintana moved into the top ten at the Tour after the race's first mountaintop finish at La Planche des Belles Filles, stage 5, where he finished 9th and took that place in the GC. He later moved up to eighth overall, where he still is, 2.22 down. His top finish was second on Friday in Foix, behind Sunweb's Warren Barguil.

Otherwise, he has consistently been dropped by the top riders. "We've fought as far as we possibly could, but my strength isn't what I'd like it to be," he said after losing more time on Thursday.  

He admitted that attempting the Giro-Tour double has proven to be a bad idea. "It's the first time we've tried to do this, and clearly it's not worked out well. Sometimes you win bets and sometimes you lose and this time, we haven't won. But another year we'll do things better, building up basically for the Tour, and we'll start out this race in better shape.

"It could have been the Giro took too much out of me. It was a very hard race and we used up a lot of energy there. It's the first time I've ridden the Giro and the Tour. We hoped to get it right, but we didn't."