Cycling news – Rohan Dennis slams Tour de France withdrawal ‘backlash’

Dennis abandoned the Tour during Stage 12 in July, one day before he was expected to challenge for the 27km individual time trial in Pau.

At the time, mystery surrounded Dennis’ withdrawal, with his own team Bahrain Merida unable to locate him for over an hour.

Dennis went on to state he “reluctantly” quit amid reports of a fallout with his team, but he told Australian newspaper The Advertiser this week that there were “no hard feelings” after he met up with his team-mates afterwards, with Vincenzo Nibali among those surprised by his withdrawal.

"It wasn't pre-planned, it wasn't a stunt, I was talking to my manager before the start and we agreed on finishing the stage and deal with everything else after but I knew that by pulling out in the short term I'd have to deal with some s***, some backlash — I didn't expect it to be this big because it's a bike race — but long term it was the best thing for me to do," Dennis said.

"They didn't expect it to happen, even [Vincenzo] Nibali said 'I followed you to where you pulled off and had to get going again', but it wasn't like they felt like I'd dogged them. They said 'OK, you're out, all good'."

He added: "What I did was pull out of a race, it's been blown out of proportion so much that people have slammed me for being everything under the sun.

Time trial world champion Dennis, who will race at the UCI Road World Championships in Yorkshire on Eurosport later this month, also stressed that he has actively avoided adding fuel to rumours regarding why he may have quit.

"I've come off Twitter and haven't got into a slandering match because we have given other people the chance to try to sort this out in a mature way," Dennis said. "I don't want to put any more fuel on the fire.

"Not once did I bad-mouth any sponsor or the team or any other rider when I pulled out or before I pulled out in the media. I was more than happy to talk to the media until that last day.