Commonwealth Games mountain biker Anton Cooper is battling a hand injury, as he chases his third successive medal at Birmingham next month.
Cooper, 27, is New Zealand's top-placed rider in world rankings, with gold at the 2010 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and silver four years later at Gold Coast.
But after failing to finish a World Cup race in Andorra, he is nursing a hand injury that left him unable to grip handlebars or change gears.
"Not how I wanted my day to end, with a trip the hospital for X-rays on my hand/wrist," Cooper has posted on Instagram. "My first DNF [did not finish] in almost 10 years.
"Unfortunately, I clipped my pedal on a pretty fast, easy part of the track and got spat off the bike. After gathering myself, I noticed a strong pain in my hand/thumb/wrist area and couldn't hold the bar properly or shift, so had to call it quits."
Cooper was running the top 10 of the race, when he abandoned. Initial scans have not revealed a break, but Cooper now faces an anxious wait to see if the pain subsides enough to compete at Birmingham.
"My fingers are crossed that it improves quickly and is not too badly damaged," he said. "I will know a lot more in the next days."
Cooper led home teammate Sam Gaze for a Kiwi 1-2 finish at Glasgow, but the pair staged a controversial finish at Gold Coast, when Gaze stormed back from mechanical troubles on the final lap, but stormed to victory, claiming his rival had tried to exploit his misfortune.
Cooper, a former junior and U23 world champion, finished sixth in the cross-country event at the Tokyo Olympics.
Gaze will also contest the mountain bike race at Birmingham and moved through the field to finish 13th in Andorra.
