About this crash from the weekend...
All was going well until the final few hundred metres before the final 3km banner at stage two of Giro d'Italia, when things got a little too squirrelly in the peloton.
The 24-year old Australian Kaden Groves, swerved to the right in a defensive manoeuvre, causing a chain reaction in the peloton which caught a lot of riders out, including Mark Cavendish and Mads Pederson.
However, the first one to hit the deck was Team DSM's Martijn Tusveld, who had his entire bike snapped his half. The team's Twitter account posted a video of one of their mechanics rushing towards the crash with the replacement bike and handing it to Tusveld, who had a few bruises and some tears on his kit but fortunately survived any other injuries.
Clear and concise info from our coaches, plus a cool head (and speedy legs) from our mechanic Felipe - to get up to @martijntusveld as quickly as possible after 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 crash at the @giroditalia today.🚲 👏🏻#KeepChallenging#Giropic.twitter.com/jbIeBchib2
— Team DSM (@TeamDSM) May 7, 2023
But when the mechanic picks up his crashed Scott Foil RC, it appears entirely snapped in half, with the top tube and down tube sliced, the two parts of the bike held together by their internally-routed cables.
The post-race gave us some more drama too, with Evenepoel blaming Groves and Groves defending himself the next day.
Groves went on to finish third yesterday in the stage three, with Pederson coming in second, and another Aussie Michael Matthews claiming victory in the uphill sprint.
Meanwhile, Evenepoel, after posting a ridiculously fast time on the opening day's individual time trial, is still holding the lead, and even gained a bonus sprint second on Primož Roglič yesterday.
Whoever wins the Eurovision final this week, they surely aren't topping this...
Judy Mapledoram, a singer-songwriter and member of Active Travel Minehead, is back with the Somerset version of her hit single "We Don't Want No Cycle Paths Here". Already gaining fame with her previous Kensington version and making an appearance on our live blog two years ago, this time she's taking shots at the anti-cycling masses in West Somerset, and we can confirm she's not taking any prisoners.
The satire is subtle, but sharp, and the lyrics will force the British public into the unchartered corners of their minds:
The cycle path to Dunster took many months to build
Why bother all it does is stop the cyclists getting killed
There's no climate emergency! What fool would ride a bike?
We’ll keep in burning fossil fuels and drive whenever we like
> We Don't Want No Cycle Paths Here: The must-hear No.1 hit of the summer
Which reminds me that we haven't updated our list of everyone's favourite songs about bikes and cycling since 2016. We'll be on it soon.
The weather has been a hit or a miss, but we're not going to let you miss anything from the news cycle that kept me and the other weekend warriors at road.cc peeling our eyes out and doing double takes every now and then (which is basically most days anyway...), that is, if we were not too busy getting carried away watching the Giro...
And in case you missed it, we started with the "a week without Jeremy Vine" challenge on our blog last week. It's safe to say we're failing that pretty early this time around.
> Vittoria claims new Corsa Pro is “the most advanced cotton road tyre ever made”
> RemcoEvenepoel uploads mind-boggling Giro d'Italia time trial domination to Strava
> BBC launches mobile broadcasting studio on a bicycle in the Netherlands