A Broken Middle Finger Is the Perfect Metaphor for Lotto's Giro d'Italia

Lotto-Intermarché‘s Giro d’Italia has been a disaster since day one, and it just keeps getting worse.

Things spiraled deeper the wrong way Wednesday after Belgian stage-hunter Lennert Van Eetvelt abandoned with a broken middle finger, leaving the struggling squad with just four riders standing with the hardest part of the 2026 Giro still looming.

Van Eetvelt crashed during the day’s winning breakaway during stage 11 and pushed on despite cuts and abrasions across his back and upper body. Post-stage X-rays revealed a fracture to the middle finger of his left hand.

“In addition to abrasions on his elbow and forearm, he also broke the middle finger of his left hand in the fall,” the team confirmed Thursday. “Starting in stage 12 is unfortunately impossible. This is a major setback for Lenny and the team.”

That’s putting it mildly.

The Belgian outfit has been riddled with problems since before the Giro started.

Three riders abandoned with illness in the first week, and Van Eetvelt was supposed to shine in the mountains to give the battered team something to smile about.

Instead he is out and the team’s Giro is in shambles.

A rider who can’t catch a break

Sport director Bart Wellens said there was no chance Van Eetvelt could safely continue.

“Braking or pulling on his handlebars would be virtually impossible. The first thing Lennert said is that he is willing to give it a try,” Wellens told Sporza.

“He could barely move it and he was in a lot of pain,” Wellens said. “From the medical side, the decision was quickly made.”

Luckily, he was not more seriously injured in the pileup, but Van Eetvelt’s latest exit extends a grim injury streak stretching back three seasons.

He underwent knee surgery in 2024 before being hit by a car during training and abandoning the Vuelta a España with breathing difficulties. In 2025, he raced the spring classics with a broken foot, crashed out of the Belgian championships, and later abandoned the Tour de France after a high-speed crash.

His 2026 season opened with a heavy fall at the Tour Down Under that sent him to the hospital.

Each time, the 24-year-old bravely fought back, and he keeps putting up good results.

“This is very unfortunate for Lennert, because it was going to be his moment,” Wellens said of the stage 11 breakaway won by Jhonatan Narváez. “It was the first time he was going all out, the first time he had set his sights on a stage. To then experience something like this, that is really not nice.”

The broken middle finger is perhaps a sign of how the season has gone for both rider and team.

A Giro derailed before it even started

Van Eetvelt’s exit is only the latest chapter in a calamitous Giro for the squad that began unraveling even before the team left Belgium.

In the days before the grande partenza — the Giro’s opening ceremony in Albania on May 8 — the team was dealing with a bizarre illness outbreak traced to the Famenne Ardenne Classic on May 3, when heavy rain reportedly sprayed cow manure contaminated with Campylobacter bacteria up from the roads and onto the peloton.

Several riders fell ill and three even required brief hospitalization with severe stomach problems, fever, vomiting, and diarrhea, Belgian media reported.

The outbreak gutted Lotto-Intermarché’s Giro selection.

Liam Slock became too sick to start and was replaced late by British rider Joshua Giddings. Arnaud De Lie, winner of the Famenne Ardenne Classic, and Milan Menten were both ill but attempted to start the Giro.

Neither lasted long. De Lie abandoned during stage 4. Menten did not start stage 5, and Giddings also quit the same day.

Van Eetvelt’s exit leaves the team with only four riders from its original Giro 8 and the hardest part of the race looming in week three.

Wellens was blunt: “It is not our Giro.”

Team fighting for its future

The wreckage extends beyond this Giro. Lotto-Intermarché has won only seven races in 2026, with its lone WorldTour victory coming at Eschborn-Frankfurt on May 1.

The team sits 16th among 18 squads competing for automatic WorldTour licenses in the next promotion-relegation cycle from 2026-2028.

Speculation in Belgium continues to link De Lie to a possible move to Tudor Pro Cycling in 2027, adding more uncertainty around one of Belgium’s most historic teams.

The squad also lost Biniam Girmay to NSN Pro Cycling as part of the merger between Lotto and Intermarché coming into 2026.

Wednesday’s stage also proved damaging across the peloton. Davide Ballerini abandoned for XDS Astana, while Edward Planckaert and Martin Tjøtta also quit.

Uno-X rider Erlend Blikra finished outside the time limit.

The race jury even handed out a yellow card to Ludovico Crescioli of Team Polti VisitMalta for a “dangerous non-compliant riding position,” the first for a rider in this Giro.