Another chaotic finish at the Vuelta; and this time a bad crash occurred just after the finish.
Video Vuelta official and rider clash heads in crash
Some of the riders sprinting for victory at the Vuelta on Thursday were nursing injuries after a crash at the finish.
A race official turned his back to the breakaway and ran up the road right after the finish, sprinting hard to get away from the fast-finishing leaders.
But just as the official looked like he had cleared a pinch point in the road created by photographers occupying half the roadway, he appeared to slow down.
He then looked behind him and stepped further into the roadway and into the path of the cyclists.
The man who won the stage Alexandre Geniez (AG2R La Mondiale) braced for contact but was going too fast to stop. He also had nowhere to go to avoid the official.
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His shoulder and head clashed with the official's head, who took a horrible looking impact. To avoid to what was an awful scene, the official's glasses flew off his face, as if to underline the impact.
And the riders behind Geniez also had nowhere to go on a narrow road almost blocked by the photographers.
Runner-up Dylan van Baarle (Team Sky) also came down, as did Dylan Teuns (BMC Racing) who was 4th on the stage.
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The riders not only hit the official, but also each other, the barriers at the side of the road and others standing in the area after the line.
A different angle to the post-finish line crash. A true misjudgement from the organizer's(?) guy :( #LaVuelta #LaVuelta18 #Eurosport @PeterSelin pic.twitter.com/CbdHHsz8cA
— Antti Veijalainen (@AnttiVei) September 6, 2018
The finish at Faro de Estaca de Bares came after 181km and almost 4½ hours of all-out action.
It looked to be located in the middle of nowhere. The road was far too narrow, with a group of photographers placed in the road beyond the line.
That made an already tight road unsafe. And when the official found himself in the wrong place and running away from the riders, the chaos turned to disaster.
The breakaway had attacked each other for much of the last hour of racing. The best of them gained over 11 minutes in the general classification men.
And that meant Jesús Herrada (Cofidis) took the race lead. He did not make the final selection in the escape but still finished in the second group over nine minutes ahead of what remained of the peloton.
It means he now leads by 3:22 from the man he took the jersey off; Adam Yates of Mitchelton Scott.
Nicolas Roche (BMC Racing) finished n 74th, in the same group as the favourites some 11:39 down.
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