A decision by Vuelta a España organisers to neutralize the final two kilometres of the Collado de la Cruza de Caravaca summit finish on Sunday has sparked a fresh safety controversy.
Mud on the highest part of the narrow, roughly surfaced descent, the indirect result of the very heavy intermittent rainfall that caused significant flooding across much of central and eastern Spain on Sunday, caused organisers to announce that GC times would be taken before the finish.
Several vehicles were blocked on the route, and mud spilled across one sweeping right-hand corner just in sight of the line so an initial decision to take the times 2.6 kilometres from the line was later substituted by a decision to take times at 2.05 kilometres.
In scenes reminiscent of cycling from bygone eras, when the riders arrived at the point, TV images showed one of the Vuelta’s technical directors, Fernando Escartín, standing on the side of the road by a gate, waving a yellow flag to warn the riders of the improvised end of the GC race. Race commissaires stood nearby taking down numbers, while a camera filmed the riders as they went through the ‘line’ to confirm their positions and times.
“We took this decision with 30 kilometres to go,” Escartín told Spanish newspaper AS. “It was a very risky situation.”
The part-neutralisation was the second in a week in the Vuelta, after the organisers took the GC times on stage 2 prior to the riders entering a final circuit at Montjuic park in Barcelona, which had also become dangerous because of heavy rain.
The decision to move the exact point where the GC times were taken on stage 9 from one location to another also formed part of the Vuelta’s makeshift finish plans a week ago in Barcelona, with initial plans to take times at the summit of a cat.3 climb on the Montjuic circuit then substituted by an earlier position.
The leading Belgian sports news agency Sporza severely criticized the way the stage 9 finish situation had been handled, saying “After the first week of the Vuelta there is one clear loser and that is the organization itself,” and that their race commentators considered it “unworthy of a Grand Tour.”
Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws even went so far as to say it was a “New page in the great amateurism book of the Vuelta.”
Top riders, on the other hand, including race leader Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma), teammate and fellow contender Primož Roglič as well as rivals Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Enric Mas…
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