Harry’s injury first flared up at Milano-Sanremo and has hampered his training and prevented him from racing ever since. In consultation with our medical team, Harry decided to have surgery now in order to give himself enough time to recover from the operation and prepare for the Tour de France.

“I've been struggling since Sanremo,” Harry said. “It's been quite off and on. I wasn’t able to race. I've been able to do a few days of good training, but then it would come back, and then I would be good for a few more days. Honestly, it's been really quite difficult. I hadn’t had an injury in nearly 10 years, unless you count a crash on my collarbone, but in terms of actual injuries, it's been a really long time, so it’s been a difficult period for me to figure it out and keep my head in the right space. Now that we know the cause of the problem and had the operation, I am looking forward to getting back on track. The rehab should be one week to 10 days off the bike, and then we expect that I should be able to start training again with a lot of physiotherapy and hopefully still make the back end of the Tour camp with the team. I love the Tour de France. It is such a special race. So, it's a good motivation, to get the rehab on track now the surgery is done. “

EF Pro Cycling head doctor Jon Greenwell is optimistic about Harry’s recovery. Getting the surgery done now was the right decision to give him the best chance to be fit for the Tour.

“Harry started with knee pain during Milano-Sanremo,” said Doctor Greenwell. “We've been managing it ever since, but it hasn't really settled down and gone away. So we did an MRI scan a couple of weeks ago, which shows the cause of the pain, which is an inflamed plica – a thickening of the lining of the knee joint. Harry consulted with a surgeon last week and we decided the best approach is to get it dealt with now. We'd been through everything else that we could do and it hadn’t settled down or gone away enough to enable him to return to racing properly. The reason that we wanted to get it done now is that we're hoping to have him back ready for the Tour de France.”

All the best for your recovery, Harry. You’ll be back to the races soon.