Matthew Riccitello was among the many riders wearing fresh bandages at Tuesday\u2019s Tour de France start in Carcassonne.<\/p>\n
The American climber escaped without serious injury after Monday\u2019s mass crash in a brutal introduction to racing in July.<\/p>\n
Despite some cuts and scrapes, the 24-year-old Arizonan says he expects to be ready for his designated role of protecting French phenom Paul Seixas in the high mountains.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not ideal to go down like that, and obviously it would have been nice for that not to have happened,\u201d Riccitello said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s still a long race, and my job is to be there with Paul in the high mountains, and that hasn\u2019t changed. I think I\u2019ll still be able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Decathlon-CMA CGM rider rolled to the start Tuesday with kinesiology tape on his right knee and bandages covering his left elbow after hitting the deck in one of the Tour\u2019s first major pileups.<\/p>\n
Riccitello said he rode through the pain after getting caught up in the pileup just three days in his first Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first 30 minutes after the crash, I had pretty bad knee pain, and it was one of those things where I couldn\u2019t pedal much with the right leg,\u201d he said. \u201cThen as the stage went on, it got better, which is good, and today also not too bad, so it should be good to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a brutal welcome to the Tour de France.<\/p>\n
Poised to pull for Seixas<\/h2>\n
Riccitello was a surprise addition to the Decathlon-CMA CGM squad to protect Paul Seixas in what is the Tour debut for both riders.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatthew will be a very important rider for Paul during this Tour,\u201d Decathlon sport director Julien Jordie told Velo<\/em>. \u201cHe has shown all season is very strong and we expect him to be with Paul in the high mountains during the race.\u201d<\/p>\n Riccitello\u2019s job comes later in the third week, but there\u2019s already a big day looming Thursday over the Tourmalet ending at Gavarnie in the Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es.<\/p>\n Fifth in last year\u2019s Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, Riccitello said he\u2019ll be riding for Seixas as long as the young Frenchman\u2019s in contention. Any talk of perhaps chasing a stage win is not on the radar right now.<\/p>\n On Monday, he was among dozens of riders caught in the crash, including Mathias Vacek, Bruno Armirail, Tobias Foss, Thymen Arensman, Josh Tarling and Micha\u0142 Kwiatkowski.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what it looks like, someone came up the inside of Bruno Armirail and took him out, and that just caused the bowling-ball effect and took a bunch of us out,\u201d Riccitello said Tuesday. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really anything I could do, but I\u2019m mostly all good.\u201d<\/p>\n Riccitello said he had no place to go and couldn\u2019t avoid the spill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-france\/riccitello-shakes-off-tour-de-france-crash-to-be-seixas-last-man-in-the-mountains\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2285033059.jpg”] Andrew Hood Updated July 7, 2026 08:36AM Matthew Riccitello was among the many riders wearing fresh bandages at Tuesday\u2019s Tour de France start in Carcassonne. The American climber escaped without serious injury after Monday\u2019s mass crash in a brutal introduction to racing in July. Despite some cuts and scrapes, the 24-year-old Arizonan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2031678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2031678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2031678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2031678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2031678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}