Cummings announces he’s quit the saddle

TWO-time Tour de France stage winner Steve Cummings has announced his retirement from professional cycling.

The 38-year-old endured an injury-hit final season with Team Dimension Data, which ended in unfortunate fashion when he crashed out of the Tour of Britain during stage five on his home turf around the Wirral. He suffered multiple broken vertebrae in the incident.

Cummings said he would have liked to have competed for one more season but found opportunities limited after NTT Pro Cycling, the rebranded Dimension Data team, announced he would not be part of their roster.

“I wanted to continue another year, I felt pretty physically good but the opportunity wasn’t there to continue,” Cummings said.

“I searched around for opportunities and they kind of dried up so that’s it. I’ve got to retire and find a different job.

“Although happy to continue I was also happy to stop. I’m not sitting here super sad. I’m just grateful for the opportunities I’ve had.

“I’m pretty privileged really to have lived my dream and to look back with good memories.

“One more year would have been nice but that was more about how it ended.

“In one way it was good to finish my career one kilometre from home but not with a broken back. That’s not ideal.”

The former Team Sky rider won a stage of the Vuelta a Espana in 2012 but his most notable personal successes came late in his career.

In 2015, competing for the South Africanregistered team MTNQhubeka which would become Dimension Data, he took an emotional victory on stage 14 of the Tour de France to Mende on what was Nelson Mandela Day.

He collected his second Tour victory a year later on stage seven to Lac de Payolle and followed that up with overall victory in the Tour of Britain.

In 2017, Cummings became a double British national champion with wins in the road race and time trial.

sport@evening telegraph.co.uk