Crash finish on the third stage of the Vuelta
The Vuelta a España was overshadowed by organisational problems, inclement weather and even attacks on the race. For example, the police arrested four activists from the Catalan independence movement who had already prepared a barrel containing 400 litres of oil to be dumped onto the race route during the third stage. The action would have caused a mass crash. However, the organisers themselves also caused crashes. At the end of the third stage, the roll-out zone at the finish was so tight that stage winner Remco Evenepoel (Team Soudal Quick-Step) collided with a police officer and lost some blood due to a laceration on his head.
Evenepoel had already complained two days earlier about the lack of lighting during the opening team time trial, which lasted well into the night: "Can you imagine what it's like to sit behind the bike of the person in front of you, with water splashing in your face and visibility of just one metre? It's like driving a car at 200 km/h on the motorway in complete darkness and without lights."
Former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas was also unhappy with the conditions during and immediately after the time trial. "The last teams rode in almost complete darkness. And when we wanted to return to the bus on our bikes, we were stuck in the middle of traffic, without lights and without anything," he said. The Welshman was lucky that the police didn't fine him for riding without lights. In this context, Thomas complained that the drivers were just like pieces on a chessboard for the organisers.
Spontaneous route changes for the ninth stage
The next controversial situation occurred on the ninth stage: next to a pylon two kilometres before the finish, the technical director of the Vuelta, Fernando Escartín, was seen waving a yellow flag wildly. He was standing at the improvised timekeeping of the stage. In the middle of the race, the organisers had decided to leave the finish for the stage win where Lennard Kämna won as a soloist, but for the overall classification, the times were stopped at Escartín's traffic cones. The reason for this was heavy rain and mud on the last kilometre. The decision triggered a furious press response.
The Belgian platform Sporza described the organisers as the "clear losers of the first week". The newspaper "Het Laatste Nieuws" even saw this as "a new page in the great amateur book of the Vuelta". Many riders at least assessed this situation differently. "I'm glad the finish wasn't at the top, because it was really quite tricky with the bend and the clay on the road," said Primož Roglič. In view of the continuing threat of inclement weather, such quick decisions may even save the sport in the open air in the long term.
Further problems in the course of the Vuelta
The weather was so capricious at this Vuelta that even the rest day turned into an odyssey. Because one of the two charter planes could not land in Valladolid due to the storm, but was diverted to Madrid, half the peloton did not reach the hotels until well after midnight.
Finally, the police also made the headlines: On the eleventh stage, officers pulled a masseur from the Cofidis team to the ground in an excessive security effort; on the 18th stage, police officers were so brutal with a masseur from Team Jumbo-Visma that he suffered a concussion. In any case, a good balance between safety, spectacle and adaptation to the external conditions was not found this year.
