Giro d'Italia maglia rosa Remco Evenepoel (Soudal QuickStep) has blamed Australian sprinter Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) for that crash that marred the end of the race's second stage today. A small number of riders came down with about 4km to go and the incident caused a split in the bunch.
A large second group on the road lost 19 seconds, which included general classification men Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla), Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos Grenadiers), Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) and Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious). Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) was also in that group.
Groves moves Ballerini with his hand and consequently the whole group changes direction pic.twitter.com/9anb9iShI1
— Procyclinglover (@procyclinglover) May 7, 2023
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Kaden Groves appears to put his hand, or a significant elbow, onto Davide Ballerini to his right, causing a wave back through the bunch which resulted in the crash with 4km to go on stage 2 of Giro d'Italia today
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The clip above appears to show Groves, against the barriers to the left, shoving Davide Ballerini (Soudal-QuickStep). That caused Ballerini to shoot to his right, with other riders doing the same. The ripple that movement sent back through the bunch caused the crash - not held by a Team DSM rider glancing behind as the wave reached him and he was the first faller.
“I was actually just next to the cause of the crash, so I think everybody saw there were barriers on the left,” Evenepoel said according to cyclingnews. “The train of Alpecin came through, and I think it was Kaden Groves pushing (Davide) Ballerini. Ballerini touched the wheel of (Josef) Cerny so he had to make a big manoeuvre to stay on the bike.
“So did I because I was behind Davide, who guided me to the finish and because of this swing to the right, I think they took the impact on the right and they just crashed because there was no space any more. So it wasn’t a nice manoeuvre, I think that was the cause of the crash, so it’s just a pity that it happened in such a nice and easy stage.”
Groves went on to finish 3rd on the stage behind winner Jonathan Milan (Bahrain-Victorious) and runner-up David Dekker (Team Arkéa Samsic).
