At this late point on the calendar, a professional rider may find himself in another part of the world and he may ask himself, well, how did I get here? The question might have been pondered by many in the Tour of Guangxi peloton on Wednesday, as the heavens opened across the Beibu Gulf and thick sheets of rain reduced visibility to a minimum. Richie Porte was in China to ride his final race in the colours of BMC Racing Team before switching to Trek-Segafredo in 2019, but there comes a point, perhaps, when professional obligations are overwritten by pragmatism. The illness that ruled Porte out of the World Championships effectively ended his 2018 season as a sporting endeavour, while a crash before the pavé of the stage to Roubaix had already seen his Tour de France challenge come to a premature halt in July.ADVERTISEMENT During stage 2 of the Tour of Guangxi, Porte reached a point where it must have felt his season had gone on long enough and he abandoned the race. `After the disappointment of not being able to ride the Worlds Iīve kind of shut it down and China was a late addition to the programme,` Porte had told Cyclingnews before the start of stage 2 in Beihai. `Looking back on my three years at BMC, Iīve enjoyed it. Itīs a fantastic team. So to finish up in China, itīs the end of the chapter, I suppose.` Porteīs three-year spell at BMC Racing has seen him buttress his standing as a one-week stage race rider, but the period has also been punctuated by a spate of ill fortune in July at the Tour de France. A crash on stage 9 has forced him to abandon each of the past two editions, while his fifth place finish in 2016 was tinged with regret, given that time lost in a stage 2 puncture handicapped his podium challenge from the outset. Window of opportunity
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