Swift quits campaign to regain full speed for Tour bid

The 25-year-old Rotherham rider has opted to put right an injury that has plagued him for three years in a bid to be fully fit for next season.

The Tour de France which begins in Yorkshire is very firmly in his sights and is one of the reasons why he has decided to bring the curtain down on what has been a stop-start year.

And he hopes to learn the lessons of past recuperations by not rushing back to action.

“The rehab this time is going to be a little bit different,” said Swift. “Because we’ve decided to end my season now it gives me much longer to focus on the rehab.

“I’m not rushing to get back on the bike, whereas last winter I did eight weeks on the home trainer whilst doing my shoulder rehab.

“This time I’m not going to touch the bike until I’m allowed back on the road and just focus 100 per cent on getting the shoulder fixed.

“I’m hoping to start again in February next year so it gives me five or six months to get ready and hopefully be really strong by the time I come back.

“I definitely have some good motivation to get going again.”

Swift’s campaign started well with two top-three finishes in Mallorca but he re-aggravated his shoulder injury in a crash in February, when he also damaged his knee.

He spent much of the Spring and summer rehabilitating and got back on the bike competitively at last month’s Tour of Poland.

He had been concentrating on the one-week races but was a non-starter on stage two of this week’s Enneco Tour.

“I couldn’t do anything,” said Swift, who is a former world champion on the track and was the last Yorkshireman to ride the Tour de France in 2011.

“I couldn’t pull on the handlebars, I couldn’t accelerate out of corners properly. So we’ve made the call now to finish the season and focus on getting the shoulder fixed.

“On the one hand it’s a bad end to a tough year, but on the other I’m almost quite relieved in a way to find out that there’s a reason why I haven’t been firing on all cylinders this year.

“It’s the third year now I’ve suffered with a bad shoulder. I had it operated on over the winter and then the crash in Mallorca re-damaged it.

“I had a big knee injury from that crash and I didn’t notice the shoulder as much as I had too much pain in my knee at the time.

“The shoulder progressively got worse and worse as I was weight-bearing on it. It was in the mountains when it really triggered.

“It got to the point where after half an hour of being on the bike there was pain and it would progress from there.”

Swift has 18 months to run on his Team Sky contract, which places even greater emphasis on the need to be fully fit for the start of what could be a pivotal year with the powerful British squad.