Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) has encountered few problems whenever the road has climbed at this Vuelta a España, but the Colombian endured a fraught finale to stage 8 after he was among the fallers in a mass crash some 50 kilometres from the finish in Murcia.
Dan Martin (Cannondale-Garmin), Tejay van Garderen (BMC), Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) and Kris Boeckmans (Lotto Soudal) were all forced out of the race by the injuries they sustained in the incident, but Chaves emerged with a mere flesh wound.
"I just scratched the paintwork," Chaves joked after collecting another red jersey from the podium.
ADVERTISEMENT
Chaves can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible. After picking his way through the carnage and remounting, he found himself almost a minute down on the peloton, and though second-placed Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) was in the same situation, Chaves’ overall lead was at real hazard.
"When you crash like that, you’ve got a lot of things going through your head but my directeur sportif Neil Stephens is an old dog and I had him in my earpiece the whole time," Chaves said. "He told me that there were still 50 kilometres and almost an hour and a half of racing left, and he reminded me to keep calm."
Chaves also had a platoon of Orica-GreenEdge teammates to help pace him back up to the peloton, and he was safely back on board before the race tackled the first of two ascents of the category 3 Alto de la Cresta del Gallo, a 3.6km climb with a wicked descent.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1JDZ7AD
No comments:
Post a Comment