Ah man, bummer news today from Italy. Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, Que.’s Nick Zukowsky had to leave the Giro d’Italia midway during Stage 17, just a few days after his nasty crash in Milan.
Apparently the Pinarello 36.5 rider was suffering from sore ribs and having a hard time breathing. The former national champion went down Sunday after the Enrico Zanoncello headbutt-but-maybe-not-headbutt incident took down Brit Robert Donaldson. Zuke was right behind and had nowhere to go.
❌ 🇨🇦 Nickolas Zukowsky has left the #GirodItalia
We wish him a speedy recovery!
— Giro d’Italia (@giroditalia) May 27, 2026
After the crash he told Canadian Cycling Magazine that he was “Obviously, pretty banged up. Feels like I got hit by a truck. But yeah, all in all, I’m just so grateful that nothing’s broken.”
He was in the mix in the finale working for team sprinter David González in a reduced bunch after many of the pure sprinters and domestiques weren’t in the group. He was trying to help with the leadout when disaster struck.
“With about 1 km to go, I kind of made my move with him on my wheel. So we shot up the right side of the bunch,” he said. “At the moment that I was kind of coming past Donaldson he went down literally a centimetre in front of me. One second I was leading out David González, and then I went from moving up to flying and hitting the deck at 65 km/h in like a blink of an eye.”
Initial scans seemed positive. “I was really, really banged up and quite hurt,” he said. “I didn’t know the extent of my injuries because I got going so fast and slid for what felt like forever on the pavement.”
Although his ribs may not be broken, bruised ones are super painful in general, let alone if you’re riding in one of the biggest races in the world. He did manage to finish Tuesday’s brutal Stage 16, which seemed promising that he was OK. Unfortunately, with 118 km to go, Zuke called it quits. Hopefully he will heal up soon. The 27-year-old is a tough rider, so if he had to abandon, you can imagine he was in quite a bit of pain.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…