Volta a Catalunya organiser Ruben Peris has launched a scathing attack on the peloton for going back on their collective word over how much of the radically altered route of stage 6 they were actually prepared to race.
In a series of changes due to very bad weather, stage 6 of the Volta first saw the hardest ascent, the Hors Categorie Col de Pradell removed from the route and a shift to Plan B of just racing the other climbs featuring in the stage.
But then as the high winds continued to blast the race, all the scheduled climbs for stage 6 were cancelled, too. The stage was rapidly revamped on Saturday morning to Plan C: two circuits of a 70-kilometre lap, starting and finishing in the town of Berga.
However, that plan C was then shrunnk even further, with a plan ‘D’ first consisting of a neutralised 70 km lap and then a ‘live’ lap. This finally morphed into the definitive plan ‘E’, of just 25 kilometres of racing, after a number of riders approached the lead organisation vehicle during the first, neutralised, lap and asked for the stage to be cut back to almost nothing.
A visibly upset Peris later accused unnamed riders of a ‘lack of respect’ for the final set of changes leading to plan ‘E’, telling Cycling News at the stage 6 finish, “It’s been an unpleasant day.”
“That’s because we’d agreed with the riders to do one thing and they did another.”
“We agreed we’d do one lap neutralised, as a recon. and another as a race. But half-way through the recon lap, we got told by some riders that it was now a question of finishing that first lap and the whole stage would be over.”
Peris said he was “really upset” because he felt the last-minute change had shown a “lack of respect to the organisers, the public, the town halls who are, at the end of the day the ones who pay.”
“Some riders, not all, have not lived up to their responsibilities.”
Peris argued that while safety had to take priority, “what can’t happen is that at the slightest change, we deprive the public of the show. [But] if riders don’t want to race, then they don’t race.”
Several riders, including race leader Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), expressed their disagreement after stage 6 with the idea that the second lap needed to be cancelled completely. Others also pointed out that the weather had been improving drastically and that the entire revised stage had been held on roads that did not present any danger to the peloton.
However, varous riders presented the counter-argument that there was no point in adding a second lap when it would have made little difference to the outcome, and that it was getting very late after the ‘go-slow’ of the first lap. ‘We’re going to arrive at 10 pm at night,” Juanpe López (Lidl-Trek) shouted audibly at the organiser’s vehicle during the stage, about the possibility of doing two laps.
GC times were taken five kilometres from the finish of the 25-kilometre stage, with the victory going to Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek). The race finishes today in Barcelona.
