Video: Rider protest as metal poles cause Tour of Basque Country crash

Riders at the Tour of the Basque Country held a protest over safety ahead of today’s second stage of the race after a number of them collided with metal poles in the finishing straight, leaving several with broken bones.

Most seriously injured was BMC Racing’s Peter Stetina who broke his right tibia and patella and four ribs in the crash. Another casualty was Orica-GreenEdge’s Adam Yates, who broke a finger, an injury that could rule him out of the Ardennes Classics.

The crash happened around 400 metres from the end of the stage, which was won by Yates’s team mate, Michael Matthews. The only concession to safety appeared to be orange and white traffic cones placed on top of the green metal poles, each around a metre high.

"Some guys barely missed the poles and some clipped them," Stetina told the BMC Racing website. "I didn't even have time to react or pull the brakes. You don't expect to have fixed obstacles in the middle of a field sprint."

The team’s chief medical officer, Dr. Max Testa, said that usually such injuries would result in a rider needing several months to recover.

"The Amgen Tour of California was my big goal and my GC (general classification) race this year," added Stetina.

"Now it is almost for sure out the window."

Etixx-Quick Step communciations manager Alessandro Tegner tweeted a picture of today’s start-line protest.

Start was delayed today due to protest of the riders after yesterday's crash. #PaisVasco @Etixx_QuickStep pic.twitter.com/ptJMeeMLno

— Alessandro Tegner (@AleTegner) April 7, 2015

The safety of riders was in the spotlight this weekend following two separate incidents at the Tour of Flanders involving a Shimano neutral service car that led to two riders – Trek Factory Racing’s Jesse Sergent and FDJ.fr’s Sebastien Chavanel being forced out of the race – the latter when his team car was shunted into him.