1st horse slows down Vollering at Strade Bianche
In the Strade Bianche women's race, Demi Vollering takes up the chase of Kristen Faulkner, who is in the lead, but is slowed down in the meantime. A horse has strayed onto the race track, from which the Dutchwoman first keeps a safe distance. After a few hundred metres, the horse fell in a left-hand bend and was unable to get back onto the track. In the end, Vollering even wins the race, beating Lotte Kopecky in the final sprint.
2. Politt despairs at the neutral material trolley
On the 19th stage of the Tour de France, Nils Politt makes it into the day's breakaway group and has hopes of a stage win. However, 90 kilometres before the finish, the Cologne rider's chain breaks and he requests a new racing bike from a neutral equipment van. He receives three bikes from the van, but is unable to continue with any of them. The first two are fitted with the wrong pedals and the third is clearly too small for the 1.92 metre tall rider. Politt is visibly satisfied afterwards. The Bora-Hansgrohe rider therefore loses touch with the leading group - a day to forget for him.
3rd kiss ext champagne bottle after Vuelta stage win
After his third ever stage win in a Grand Tour, Sepp Kuss not only takes the obligatory champagne shower after stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana, but also drinks almost the entire contents of the bottle. Only after more than a dozen big gulps does he put it down again and wave to the cheering fans. The alcohol didn't do the American any harm: in the end, Sepp Kuss was the overall winner of the Tour of Spain.
4th Vuelta start in the dark
The first stage of the Vuelta a Espana was supposed to be a sporting battle between the teams in the form of a team time trial. However, as the race did not start until after 7pm and pouring rain set in, visibility quickly deteriorated. Unsurprisingly, Team dsm-firmenich, a team that had started quite early and in good light conditions, won the stage. After the race, last year's winner Remco Evenepoel, among others, gave free rein to his displeasure and criticised the race organisation: "This is totally ridiculous and a disgrace. The organisers should know what can happen." It wasn't the only organisational mishap at the Tour of Spain 2023.
5 Jakobsen crashes into a spectator's mobile phone
The 7th stage of the Vuelta a San Juan features a sprint finish, with Fabio Jakobsen one of the top favourites for the stage win. In the sprint, the Dutchman chooses the route that leads close to the barriers, where many spectators cheer on the riders. Numerous fans stretch their arms over the barriers to film the action as closely as possible with their mobile phones. One arm is even stretched out so far that a mobile phone crashes into Jakobsen's face. The sprinter briefly loses his balance, his glasses fall to the ground along with his mobile phone and he has to slow down. As a result, Jakobsen has no chance of intervening in the battle for the stage win. At least he doesn't crash and suffers no damage from the incident.
