Riders and team staff alike at O Gran Camiño have praised the race organiser’s decision to neutralise the times for the opening time trial stage for the GC after galeforce winds rendered the exposed course in A Coruña too risky to use time trial bikes.
The main reason for such widespread approval of the decision proved largely to be based on safety concerns, on a day when the stage came close to being cancelled completely, for what would have been the second year running.
Instead, the considerably improved weather conditions in the afternoon allowed the race to go ahead, albeit without the usual time gaps, meaning none of the GC riders were obliged to tackle the TT course at an all-out pace.
Another curious side-benefit from the point of view of at least one rider from the five Continental teams taking part was that with no TT bikes allowed because of the weather, material-wise the playing field between the top flight WorldTour teams, with their comparatively huge financial firepower, and the much lower budget Conti’ squads was temporarily levelled.
Compared with mid-morning, in any case, by the time the riders got on their bikes the galeforce winds had dropped notably and previously torrential rain showers had eased off. There were still very strong gusts of wind from time to time, though, and with some rubbish bins and barriers still lying on their sides as a result of the storm next to parts of the course, riders and team directors were understandably very cautious about how they tackled the time trial.
“I’ve just been around the course with Hugh [Carthy] and even with road bikes there were a couple of sketchy moments,” EF Education-EasyPost sports director Tom Southam told Cyclingnews as he waited to escort another EF rider around the time trial.
“Such are the nature of TT bikes, disc wheel and deep wheels, it could be pretty dangerous out there with this wind.”
“It’s not the rain, there are plenty of parts of the course that are ok. But if you have the Froome incident in mind” – a reference to the Criterium du Dauphiné 2018 when a freak gust of wind saw Chris Froome crash very badly and suffer major injuries during training on his TT bike – “which is still fresh in a lot of people’s minds, then I think they’ve made the right decision.”
“For me, once you’ve accepted it’s dangerous and you want to switch to [using] the road bikes, you can’t say it’s going to count for GC. The real question was basically if it’s going to count or not.”
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