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...
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.
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...
[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.
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
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...
👏👏👏 @GoZwiftpic.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...