The UCI has said a combination of the narrow roads, very fast racing and bad luck resulted in German Dario Gomez being left stranded roadside at the Worlds.
The 18-year-old Colombian became one of the stars of the
race for all the wrong reasons after his tubular came off his wheel with about
80km remaining.
He pulled over to the side but none of the team cars stopped
for him. Neutral service and his own car were trapped far back the road because
the race had split to pieces.
The TV cameras stayed on the young rider and saw him break down in tears, sit on the grass verge and then walk away up the road with his bike and wheel in hand.
He eventually got a wheel after over four minutes and got
back into the race, finishing in 60th place.
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His team car was so far back because Colombia was sharing
a car with Chile and Uruguay and one of the Uruguayan riders had crashed.
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The Colombians wrote to the UCI after the race to
complain in strong terms, saying they had been promised there would be plenty
of neutral service yet none was present when their rider needed them.
They got a reply from Pascale Schyns, the UCI’s
Continental adviser to the UCI America Tour.
"I would like to clarify the following, so that the
facts are clear," he said at the start of his correspondence.
"During the previous 25km, the riders were going
very fast, descending Kidstones Bank.
“The roads, at that point of the course and for around
30km, were very narrow and, considering the danger of letting cars pass, we
would have been putting the safety of the whole peloton in jeopardy.
"For that reason, the commissaires decided not to
let any vehicles pass from one group to another, whether they were team vehicles
or neutral service vehicles.
“When the conditions improved, they let them pass
one-by-one. It's a pain this happened to a rider from your country, but the
race circumstances made it so. Fate had it that the rider punctured at the
worst moment of the race."
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