2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal, who was forced to withdraw from this year's race due to back pain, said he has had back problems ever since he started riding.

The Colombian native was on the podium at this year's Tour de France, leading the overall battle for the Ineos Grenadiers, but struggled on the stage to the Grand Colombier, losing over seven minutes. He stalled further the next day and dropped out of the race in the third week.

Bernal visited the Vuelta a Colombia on Saturday and told Signal Colombia television station that he has always had problems with his back.

"The pain is really old, when I won the Tour last year, my first year in the Tour, when I was racing mountain bikes, there was always pain there.

Last month Bernal told ESPN Colombia, "The problem is that one leg is longer than the other. That caused my spine to scoliosis, so it's going to take me a lot longer to recover."

He speculated that the pain was due to a pinched nerve in his spine that was pinched in his leg, and it appears that his rapid ascent into the second half of the season caused the pain.

Bernal started the second half of the season after his coronavirus infection with a victory at La Route d'Occitanie and second place at the Tour de l'Ain, but suffered back pain at the Criterium du Dauphiné.

"I think the hours on the rollers during the quarantine, going from zero to racing hard in France before the Tour, irritated the nerves in my vertebrae a bit, and that's where the pain came from," he said on Saturday.

"I feel good. It's a little bit of a complicated injury, but I'm working hard to get to the level I should be at next year."

He said he has a "whole team of doctors" monitoring his progress and running tests to determine the cause of the pain.

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