Greg Henderson is out of the tour de France after a heavy crash on the fourth stage.
The Kiwi cyclist suffered a sizeable gash on a knee when he and two teammates slid on a roundabout about 28km from the finish in the day's 163.5km stage from Le Touquet-Paris-Plage to Lille.
"Silly crash and I landed on my weak knee. It just exploded. Messy looking thing. Off to surgery now," the Lotto-Belisol rider tweeted.
It robs German sprint ace Andre Greipel of his key leadout man for the rest of the 21 stage race and he was powerless to prevent Marcel Kittel from wining his third win in this year's race.
Greipel tweeted that it will be difficult to grab a stage win without his wingman Henderson.
Henderson, 37, had been due to contest the Commonwealth Games road race next month.
His withdrawal from the tour leaves Garmin-Sharp's Jack Bauer as the sole Kiwi contesting the event.
He was 190th on the day's stage and is 188th on general classification as he prepares to assist tour hope Andrew Talansky in the coming stages.
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