“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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My personal theory is that this is how modern doping happens; do all of the performance enhancement early on and train hard on top of that - the boost will allow you to reach heights that would otherwise not have been attainable. After that it is all about maintenance and minor improvements, likely achievable after the pharmacological crutch has been removed. From this story it seems the spectre of doping will continue to hover over professional cycling that little bit longer. No other sport seems to have been affected in quite this way.
Of course most (otherwise law abiding) motorists don't keep to the 20mph limit especially without enforcement, guess what, given the opportunity, many, if not most, will not keep to the 30mph limit and there will still not be any enforcement. But what a 20mph limit does is bring the speeds down, resulting in less crashes, which, when they do occur will result in less damage, reduce the severity of injuries and the number of deaths. And what we really want is more dead children, isn't it councillor?
I think the prosecution have just persuaded tthe magistrate that the driver had to move towards the kerb to accommodate the cyclist. That movement is visible in the video, though I accept there's a chicken and egg question whether the cyclist forced the move, or only proceeded when it was clear the driver had moved over for them.
Which rule(s) are you thinking of? The 1.5m wording appears in rule 163, which is expressly about overtaking.
Jone's are discontinuing their 660mm H bars and are offering 35% off the aluminium and 25% off the titanium versions. Get them while their cheap. I went for the ti version 7 years back and highly recommend them. I went for the 660s, I could do with the extra inch when going up the hills but went for the narrower ones as I often ride in traffic.
In the article it states that the fixed penalty option did not exist so the police decided to take it to court, not the cyclist. I would agree with what you have said if it was not for the painfully slow speed that both the cyclist and the oncoming driver were going at. At that speed there was no danger to anyone and no inconvenience to the oncoming driver (at least no more than a pothole).
There are shared use paths parallel to this section of road already. Subject to the usual gripes with shared use, they're not too bad, so I wouldn't detour through Llandaff Fields just to avoid them (lovely park though it is). It is however a very useful traffic free route into the City Centre.
@Rendel Harris Exactly. It's like a bagpipe player turning up at an Irish music session. Annoying and irrelevant.
Then that would be an offence on the part of that person, or the responsible adult with them, of opening a car door so as to endanger.
@perce Rather like Police Academy, first time around it was mildly amusing albeit in a rather puerile and stupid fashion, when one gets to the 12th iteration the "joke", if there ever was one, has worn rather thin.
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