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May 14 (Reuters) –

World champion Remco Evenepoel abandoned the Giro d’Italia with COVID-19 shortly after he regained the race lead with victory in a rain-affected 35-km individual time trial on Sunday.

“It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that I will be leaving the Giro d’Italia due to COVID-19 after taking a routine test, which unfortunately was positive,” Evenepoel, who had regained the Maglia Rosa by winning Sunday’s individual time trial, said in a statement.

The new race leader is Britain’s Geraint Thomas, who had finished stage nine one second behind the Belgian, who won two stages and wore the Maglia Rosa four times.

Three-time Vuelta champion Primoz Roglic is second overall, two seconds behind with Thomas’s Ineos-Grenadiers team mate Tao Geoghegan Hart in third place, five seconds off the pace.

Ineos Grenadiers were without two-time time trial world champion Filippo Ganna after the Italian tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of stage eight.

Monday is a rest day on the Giro.Tuesday’s stage 10 is a 196-km ride from Scandiano to Viareggio, which features a long climb before a fast-running and technical descent. (Reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru and Julien Pretot in Paris; Editing by Toby Davis and Hugh Lawson)