Dan Martin remonstrated with the
Movistar rider he seemed to blame for his late crash today on stage 5 of La
Vuelta, as captured in a spectator’s video below.
However, the Israel Start-Up Nation has
dusted himself down and played down the impact of the late crash.
"I'm fine,” he said, “I was a bit
frustrated because I think I could have done a good stage result. It was a
silly little crash; I got hit by a guy from behind, I was completely
stopped.
"I'm a little sore from where the
guy hit me but, yeah, I'm absolutely fine. I think the Movistar guy crashed on
the corner, I don't know why.
“I saw the crash, I stopped, and the guys behind kept riding full gas and hit me. It’s frustrating, but that’s cycling.”
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The 35-year-old Irishman remains in 2nd place overall, just five seconds behind race leader Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma), as his crash today happened in the final 3km so he suffered no time loss in the general classification.
Today’s stage took the riders some 184km
from Huesca to Sabiñanigo with three categorised climbs, all late in the
day, before a descent towards the finish and a modest incline at stage end.
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The riders covered 52km in the first hour of racing, with the peloton chasing down the first breakaway for 70km, making for a very hard start even before any climbing was tackled.
After that first escape group, which
numbered 14 riders, was caught another move of 12 men for clear.
Sepp Kuss (Jumbo Visma) was the most
significant name in that group and so Martin’s Israel Start-Up Nation fired Matteo
Badilatti into the move so it wouldn’t have to ride in the peloton.
However, just past the halfway point the
pace in the peloton went up, due to Ineos Grenadiers, and that saw Kuss and a
number of others in the escape get caught, though a group that had attack from
the breakaway was still clear.
And from that group, Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal) win the stage with Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) 2nd and Thymen Arensman (Team Sunweb) in 3rd some 2:13 ahead of the reduced peloton, led home by race leader Roglic.
“It was a very hard day and obviously I
still had in the end, so we coped well with how fast it was and the guys were
always watching the breakaways to make sure we weren’t exposed,” Dan Martin
said.
“And Matteo went with Sepp Kuss when the
break went and that was really important because we didn’t have to work.
"Hopefully I will have good legs
again tomorrow and we'll try and conserve this place on GC until the rest
day," Martin said, adding he and his team would takes things “day by day”.
Tomorrow’s
stage 6 is 146km from Biescas to Aramón
Formigal, featuring a summit finish up a 14.6km climb at 4.8 per cent, though
there are steeper stretches as the climb progresses.
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