Toms Skujins (Lidl-Trek) announced that he will miss all the spring classics after developing illness during Paris-Nice. The 34-year-old Latvian, who withdrew before stage 5 of the French stage race on March 12, said he has not recovered sufficiently to race through the cobbled campaign for the first time in more than a decade.
Skujins had been scheduled to support Mads Pedersen in the cobbled classics, where his experience as a road captain and his ability to absorb hard work in chaotic conditions make him a valued part of Lidl-Trek's lineup. Losing him alters the team's depth around Pedersen at a point in the calendar where positioning and repeat efforts in the finale often determine whether a leader even contests the race.
The illness struck during a Paris-Nice that was unusually attritional. Cold, wet conditions and multiple crashes created a wave of withdrawals across the race, with stage 4 alone producing fifteen DNS or DNF results and another eight following before stage 5.
His Paris-Nice DNS stood alongside riders including Juan Ayuso, David Gaudu, Pavel Sivakov, Luke Durbridge and Oscar Onley, among others. The scale of the abandonments underlined how punishing the race week had been, though for Skujins the consequences reach beyond one stage race and into Lidl-Trek's entire spring programme.
How Paris-Nice unravelled for Skujins
Before the illness forced him out, Skujins had already endured a difficult race. After the team time trial, he posted a self-critical message on Instagram, writing: "S-it day to have a s-it day. Pretty much solely cost the team a TTT win. With 6 riders the guys managed to finish just 2 seconds off the W."
With six riders, Lidl-Trek finished two seconds behind the winners. Skujins framed the result as a personal failure after a strong winter of preparation: "Hard pill to swallow when you've worked so hard the whole winter to let the team down."
The gap between his team time trial frustration and his stage 5 withdrawal was less than 48 hours.
For Lidl-Trek, Skujins is not the team's headline rider in the classics, but he is the kind of domestique whose absence is felt in the final 50 kilometres of races like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Those are races where the ability to stay near the front and protect a leader's position through narrow, high-speed racing is difficult to replace.
Skujins will now focus on recovery with a view to returning later in the season. No specific target race has been confirmed. The cobbled classics, which return this weekend with E3 Saxo Classic on March 27 and run through to Paris-Roubaix on April 12, will proceed without one of the riders Pedersen would have relied on most.
Cover image credit: Billy Ceusters
