Dan Martin was one of three top riders left sprawled on the tarmac after their high-speed spill. But the Irishman got up and incredibly kept going to the finish.
Irish rider Dan Martin crashed in a high-speed incident close to the end of the Volta a Catalunya final stage today.
The UAE Team Emirates man was left sprawled on the tarmac, with Team Sky's Egan Bernal and Jose Joaquin Rojas (Movistar).
On a sweeping left downhill bend just 6km from the finish, Martin ran into the others who had fallen first.
When the Irish rider first hit the deck and stayed down things didn't look good.
Bernal was 2nd overall at the start of the stage and really took the fight to race leader Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) on the undulating circuit in Barcelona.
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The 21-year-old, who had been enjoying a fantastic race, was taken from the crash scene to hospital. At the time of writing he remained his hospital undergoing checks.
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Martin was luckier, if you could call it that. He managed to get back to his feet and back onto his bike. And he would even finish the stage; in 100th, some 7:34 down.
He said afterwards that he didn't seem to be badly hurt. But he bemoaned his bad luck.
“Today I would have liked to be aggressive,” he said of the concluding stage to a race he never hit the heights in.
“I was waiting for the final lap for a strong attack, but we crashed. It seems we had a lot of bad luck here so far but it seems I'm not so badly hurt.”
Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) won the stage by 13 seconds from Marc Soler (Movistar). The group of favourites, including Valverde, was just five further seconds back.
More to follow.
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