“The positioning of those barriers makes zero sense”: More crash controversy hits Vuelta a España (+ director apologises for “small mishap” of Remco Evenepoel incident); Taylor Zwift takes training indoors + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Taylor Zwift takes training indoors
👏👏👏 @GoZwift pic.twitter.com/S54VwoDEqT
— Simon Warren (@100Climbs) August 29, 2023
Presumably top hits include ‘Cruel summer (training on the turbo because the weather’s grim)’ and ‘Bad blood bags’… yes, I had to Google ‘Taylor Swift songs’ to make those references…
Vuelta director apologises for "small mishap" of Remco Evenepoel finish crash, admits "we would have liked a better start" after weekend carnage
One completely normal, boring, uneventful stage of La Vuelta a España — is that really too much to ask? Rain, rider complaints, flooding, protests, crashes, high winds, crashes, more crashes… just give me a sprint stage suitable for an afternoon siesta please.
> Police uncover Vuelta a España protest plot to pour “400 litres of liquid” onto route
Following on from yesterday’s live blog, where we brought you Remco Evenepoel’s comments about the post-finish line crash which left him bloodied following stage victory, now the Vuelta’s director Javier Guillén has apologised to the Belgian and admitted “we all would have liked a better start” to the race.
[Rafa Gomez/SprintCyclingAgency]
“We are sorry for what happened at the finish line and we apologise,” he told Marca. “We will look into it.” However, from a sporting perspective, Guillén believes “everything went well”…
“Everything went well. We had a small mishap as soon as we crossed the finish line with Evenepoel. We will analyse what happened. Possibly a better management could have been done. Organisational issues cannot be escaped.
“In the big tours they always have starts that you never know how they are going to be. We depend on the weather circumstances and we have had rain in Barcelona after three months when everything was very dry. We had to deal with water, and the next [day] more rain. We had to deal with the cyclists, but the stages are taking place, beyond that we all would have liked a better start.
“A stage from a sporting point of view that has been perfect. The classification is very well-prepared for us. A very well-dimensioned stage. Arinsal is a very demanding climb with very hard ramps. The strongest has won. It was the first mountain stage and Andorra is a guarantee of success. It was a very exciting finish with a high-quality breakaway that was selected as we entered the Principality. Fortunately, the favourites fought for the stage. It was a great finish.”
Remco was less impressed, saying three days of incident in a row was “breaking my balls a bit now… I’ve had enough.”
“There was not enough space after the finish line, and I went between the cameras and soigneurs,” he said. “But it’s only some skin and meat gone from my head. But that’s good because it’s less weight for the uphills.”
Every cloud, Remco…
Is Aaron's new Cannondale Supersix Evo LAB71 the nicest bike in the office?
We go again...
News from this morning’s race meeting…
16 roundabouts in the final 16km of #LaVuelta23 stage 5 pic.twitter.com/cEra9YRUkk
— Lidl-Trek (@LidlTrek) August 30, 2023
Five cool bikes for road and gravel from Canyon, Enigma, Orro, Basso and Lapierre
> Five cool bikes for road and gravel from Canyon, Enigma, Orro, Basso and Lapierre
Vuelta peloton counts cost of crashes as three riders leave race before stage five
[ASO/ Luis Angel Gomez / SprintCyclingAgency©2023]
The other side of all these Vuelta crashes is the riders abandoning the race, unable to continue. Three more have gone home ahead of stage five — Bryan Coquard, Kobe Goosens and Ruben Guerreiro.
Cofidis, the team of Coquard who crashed heavily in the fall around 10km from the finish yesterday, says the medical staff believe their sprinter has suffered a fractured scapula, which will be examined on his return to France.
Goosens said of his situation: “The wound to my knee is too deep. I’m mentally out, sometimes cycling is cruel. I’m going home to recover. I wish the team all the best, they will do good.”
Guerreiro suffered a fractured collarbone, meaning Enric Mas is down a helper and Movistar a potential stage winner as the race moves on to the eastern province of Castellón. The peloton seemingly happy to have a quiet day, with 40km done there is a sole leader, Eric Antonio Fagundez of Burgos-BH, four minutes clear.
EDIT: Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, Jayco AlUla’s Eddie Dunbar, following up his seventh place at the Giro, crashed in the neutral zone and has been forced to abandon, while teammate Filippo Zana is out with stomach problems. Tough day for them… time to go stage hunting.
Campervan driver faces $500 fine for ploughing into group of cyclists, injuring seven, in "terrifying" collision
Skills
A courteous use of skillz. pic.twitter.com/37nxodOoWK
— nyvelocity (@nyvelocity) August 30, 2023
Seeing how unlucky this Vuelta has been so far, the bottle probably rolled down the hill and took out several dropped riders…
British Cycling "looking forward" to working alongside Department for Culture, Media and Sport for physical activity drive
British Cycling is one of the organisations working with the government on a new Department for Culture, Media and Sport initiative to help an additional 3.5 million adults and children get physically active by 2030.
Breaking the numbers down, the department said it wanted participation targets of an additional 2.5 million adults and one million children taking part in sport by 2030. The taskforce, led by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Sports Minister Stuart Andrew and former England Rugby Union international Ugo Monye, will work with governing bodies, the physical activity sector and schools to aim to deliver the target by the end of the decade.
Kaden Groves wins back to back Vuelta stages after ANOTHER crash impacts the finish
After this morning’s controversy about yesterday’s barrier placement, here’s what happened today at La Vuelta…
Kaden Groves wins Stage 5!! 🇦🇺🏆
𝘿𝙍𝘼𝙈𝘼 at the finish line 🍿#LaVuelta | @kaden_groves pic.twitter.com/1crxnCCFjb
— Eurosport (@eurosport) August 30, 2023
Kaden Groves outsprinted Filippo Ganna — yep, that’s not a typo — to win stage five of the Vuelta a España this afternoon. Ganna, whose enormous power was unleashed by Ineos Grenadiers to go for his own goals today, launched first, surging up to Groves’ back wheel before the Australian asserted himself as the fastest in the race to take a second win in as many days.
A caveat perhaps in the form of Juan Sebastián Molano and a couple of others being held up by a big crash at one of the 16 roundabouts in today’s final 16km. Despite the seemingly dry roads, several riders hit the deck at 3km to go, thankfully no GC contenders lost time as a result of that.
Remco Evenepoel remains in red, extending his advantage thanks to a cheeky bonus second raid at the sprint point 11km from the finish. Tomorrow, it’s time for another summit finish…
#LaVuelta23 pic.twitter.com/RzMnPTIm5g
— Cycling Memes (@Cycling_Memes1) August 30, 2023
"The positioning of those barriers makes zero sense": More crash controversy hits Vuelta a España
Some fallout from yesterday’s stage before today’s (hopefully uncontroversial and entirely straightforward one)…
Heartbreaking finish on stage 4 of #LaVuelta23
Marijn went for it. Beautiful teamwork to set Marijn up for the sprint finish but he went down in a crash with a few hundred meters to the line. Tomorrow’s another day. pic.twitter.com/k9WHXdcB4b
— EF Pro Cycling (@EFprocycling) August 29, 2023
One of the pre-stage favourites Marijn van den Berg, looking for his first Grand Tour stage win, crashed out of contention after seemingly taking a corner too hot. However, as many have pointed out on social media and TV since… did the barriers’ positioning contribute to the Dutchman’s fall?
The Sprint Kings 👑
Alpecin-Deceuninck have won sprints at all 3 Grand Tours this season after Kaden Groves wins Stage 4 of La Vuelta 😮💨
Watch full highlights on @RoadCode 👇🏼
— Velon CC (@VelonCC) August 29, 2023
Adam Blythe thinks so, pointing out the way the barrier turns back on itself and out into the road again…
“The hard thing with that,” he told GCN’s post-stage analysis. “Is that you’ve got the vision coming into the corner of where the barriers are… as a cyclist you always look for the exit of the corner and you can always generally judge or try to correct it. You saw him trying to correct it but what we couldn’t see until that final shot was the barrier was there, and then where he went into it there was a kick out from a metre, a metre and a half.
“I think the road had gone round and then moved back in […] the kick out moves back in a metre, a metre and a half, from where it was so it’s not… the organisers should have put that original barrier closer to make it narrower.”
Much of the discussion on Twitter post-stage agreed with Blythe…
Michael James saying: “The positioning of those barriers makes ZERO sense to anyone who has raced their bike in a professional race. Does ANYONE with ‘experience’ not look at things like this as the course is being set up? Interested in the takes of the former pros?”
MichaelB questioned why they didn’t just mount the barrier closer, as Blythe suggested, making the turn narrower but with no chance of catching anyone out with the kick back in.
Niall Downey noted, like our own weary minds have, that this is day four (and this morning, day five) of the same rider safety discussion. You’ve really got to feel for the peloton…
Thankfully, Van den Berg told Dutch news outlet Wielerflits that he’s okay after the crash and “the wounds are not too bad”.
Let’s see what stage five has in store for us…
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Latest Comments
Hurra to the European Cycling Industries' manifesto. There needs to be a crackdown on illegal e-bike mods.
@IanMK But Davies was charged with causing death by careless driving, which is an offence under the RTA, therefore the RTA must apply. You seem to have missed the fact that the employee went to trial.
*Sound of brain imploding in the Surrey area*
@VIPcyclist The State treats cyclists suffering a nearmiss as the witness to an offence, the State being the victim. IMO this is one of the main issues that cyclists need to campaign against Too right! But for 'State' read 'police' ttps://upride.cc/incident/4148vz_travellerschoicecoach_closepass/ The police have fought for 4 1/2 years to prevent me finding out what they did about this incident, after they claimed they were taking action. They're presently fighting against me finding out as a 'victim', and it's presently at the determinedly anti-freedom-of-information Information Commissioner, which is on a go-slow dodge at the moment. It's obvious from the time and expense the police are desperate to expend in denying the information that they did either nothing at all, or sent the joke advice letter for the public service vehicle driver to ignore. My worry was 'what do I do if the police just lie about it?'
@eburtthebike why isn’t Center Parcs installing video cams on all their vehicles, so that next time, there’ll be sufficient evidence? Because, as has been stated several times above, cyclist deaths are not counted as 'real deaths', they are seen as 'you're bound to hit the odd one, can't be helped'. Drivers can't be expected to look at the road ahead all the time, they're too busy with all the other tasks they have to do. We know that the penalty for killing the 'old knacker' (that means: like me) cyclist on the Skipton bypass recently will be a joke suspended sentence at worst.
Droool....looks (and sounds) like a dream bike!
"The BBC reports that the colleague who hit Penny Bulpitt was cleared of causing death by careless driving earlier this year because of “insufficient evidence”." Insufficient evidence? A dead body, isn't that sufficient? Instead of telling people to wear helmets, why isn't Center Parcs installing video cams on all their vehicles, so that next time, there'll be sufficient evidence. From the BBC drivel "Stephenson said Center Parcs was open to any other suggestions." but apparently they can't think of any apart from cycle helmets. Words fail me.
As was pointed out in reply to my own erroneous comment yesterday re. mandating helmets, Center Parcs roads count as a 'public place', so road law (inc. RTA) does apply. If it didn't, it's highly unlikely a case would have come to court in the first place. The police not being involved in the carpark case doesn't mean that they *couldn't* have been - it might just be that no-one bothered to report it to them.
@mitsky "If the situation was the same but the victim was simply someone standing still, then this would have been a KSI leading to a 6 or 7 £ figure public/employee liability claim......" No. They'd just recommend pedestrian helmets. "I am usually angered by reports of dangerous drivers facing lenient or non-existent punishments but this is something else." You and me both. Just when you think motornomativity has reached its peak.....
To carry on my argument from yesterday. This is an incident between two employees on private land at their place of work. I'm not sure things like the RTA apply. I think the only potential charge would be manslaughter. At my old company we had Forklift drivers that didn't have a driving license. We had procedures, risk assessments, training etc to allow them operate the FL. There were rules they had to follow if they didn't want to be on a disciplinary. From the Centre Parcs statement I would suggest that their corrective action / risk assessment is to concentrate on training and whilst they are recommending use of helmet their own findings are not saying that this should be mandatory. We of course do not know the outcome of the HSE report (ie were their procedures sufficient/were they fined) or what disciplinary action was taken against the employee. As an aside I knew somebody that knocked over and injured a pedestrian in a supermarket carpark. I know his insurance company massively increased his premiums but I never heard that the police were involved at any stage.
4 thoughts on ““The positioning of those barriers makes zero sense”: More crash controversy hits Vuelta a España (+ director apologises for “small mishap” of Remco Evenepoel incident); Taylor Zwift takes training indoors + more on the live blog”
Wasn’t Cruel Summer a
Wasn’t Cruel Summer a Bananarama song?
Now “Look what you made me do”, “I knew you were trouble”, but I will try to “shake it off”…
…and get my coat
Chief indicator designer at
Chief indicator designer at Audi realises he’s wasted his life
I was surprised a while back
I was surprised a while back when my nieces where planning on getting Taylor Swift tickets. They outgrew their girly pop songs phase many years ago, but it turned out that Paramore are supporting her which is far more fitting to their tastes in music.
Ride celebrates Black cycling
Ride celebrates Black cycling champ Major Taylor, modern-day African-American bike advocacy
The Major Taylor Trail Keepers Celebration Ride was organized by MTTK Chicago, Friends of the Major Taylor Trail, and Major Taylor Cycling Club Chicago.
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2023/08/29/ride-celebrates-black-cycling-champ-major-taylor-modern-day-african-american-bike-advocacy