Movistar accuses UCI of influencing outcome after crash in Vuelta a España
Sep 13 2019 11:13 pm CET
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Movistar team tried to take advantage of the mass crash in the peloton at the Vuelta a España, pulling and leaving the other GC contenders behind but eventually slowed down to allow them to return to the pack.
There was a mass crash at around 60 kilometres to go in the 19th stage of the Spanish grand tour -affecting riders like Primoz Roglic and Miguel Ángel López- and Movistar changed the pace in front of the pack to leave them further behind. After many kilometres of the Spanish team pulling the pack -in a controversial move, it decided to slow down to allow the other riders to return.
Movistar's sports director José Luis Arrieta shortly after spoke to the official broadcaster of the Vuelta, RTVE, and accused the UCI of drafting the riders back and as such deciding who will win the race. "We knew how that descent was," he said to the Spanish broadcaster. "There was a bridge and then came a zone with hard winds. We have lived this kind of situations with Alejandro (Valverde) in the Tour or in the Vuelta and nobody wondered why they didn't wait for Alejandro.
"We were prepared for this. We understand that the UCI said that they were bringing the riders back to the peloton behind the cars. If this is cycling and the UCI decides who will win a race, then perfect. I don't share that way of thinking, but I told the riders to stop, although other times we were affected by similar situations and the UCI didn't take that kind of decisions.
"We had planned to attack in that part of the hard winds. If you see the images, in the town just before we were already at the head of the peloton. If we spent hours and hours checking the routes and the ways to end up like this... I don't like any kind of crashes. We have lost races because of crashes. The decision of stopping was ours, but it was after the UCI said that it was going to bring the riders to the pack with the cars."
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