George Hincapie no longer seeking Tour de France victory

(See July 14 update below:)

“The general (classification) is over for me,” a dejected George Hincapie announced after his 44th place finish on Thursday dropped him to 40th overall in the Tour de France, 23 minutes behind the leader.

The Discovery team stalwart and the only cyclist to participate in every one of Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France wins had high hopes coming into the race. He was often mentioned as Armstrong's successor on the Discovery team and among the shortlist of contenders to win this year.

“Now I will just try to recover and go for some stages,” he was quoted in VeloNews.

Hincapie's change in tactics also was announced on the blog of Rich Hincapie, the cyclist's brother who is in France to cheer him on:

“George looked so strong out there and once again it looked like he just ran out of energy. The team doctor says he came into this tour way too light and it has really made things difficult on him.”

This must be a big disappointment for Hincapie, a Greenville, South Carolina, resident. He trained hard in the off-season and worked to recover from that shoulder injury in the Paris-Roubaix bike race that knocked him out for a large part of the spring.

Now that Hincapie has made his decision, his team has to figure out what to do. This is uncharted territory of Discovery — being without a strong contender. Jose Azevedo is the highest placed at 18th, 7:27 out of the lead.

Eurosport quoted Johan Brunyeel after the race:

“It's clear that it's not going to be our Tour de France. We can forget about the general classification and we have to now try and find a stage victory. For now, there's no team leader. With no one in the top ten, you can't talk about a team leader.”

He noted that things might have turned out differently if Discovery had two or three riders in with the last breakaways.

(July 14 update: The new direction for Discovery was evident the very next day, in the 12th stage. Hincapie jumped out on at least two breakaways, both that were reeled in, and teammate Yaroslav Popovych latched onto another one that sustained the rest of the race and gave him the stage win.)