Vuelta a España Vuelta 2025, stage 21: Alalpardo - Madrid (108 km)

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Yes, I'm chocked they didn't clear it with law enforcement before the stage whether they would do their job or not.
Is a bike race important enough to warrant the kind of scenes that could lead to? If the last stage of the Vuelta is cancelled, no one really cares outside the cycling bubble. But if there are scenes of violence--as part of efforts to clear the roads for a bike race--going viral on social media, it's a different story.
 
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Well the UCI can decide if they can remove the licence of the Vuelta or they can pack the bags of IPT and send them to the amateur ranks.
That would be a punishment on the organiser, who has no say on what the police does or doesn't do to maintain order. If there is anyone to punish it's the country hosting the race, for all races.
 
If I can say this aside from the specific political content, in a protest of this sort when it's about messaging to the wider world rather than stopping the home government from doing something, the escalation to violence and stoppage will eventually dilute the messaging. Instead of seeing (during several passages of the peloton) the thousands of flags held by peaceful protesters at the finish area, instead we begin seeing images of chaos that disconnects from the message. Protestors will feel like they've won something. But only for their egos, not for their cause.
 
I think some people are angry with Matteo Jorgenson's mustache.. I know I am.. People are harder to see but they are out there!
Matteo Jorgenson's support group:
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At this point, the UCI has a pretty binary choice they need to make: no more races in Spain, or no more Sylvan Adams in the sport. However, it’s much more likely that they will continue to pretend it’s not up to them to do anything, and thus I don’t think this will be the last time we see a race cancelled in Spain for this reason. Only way I would expect them to make a call either way is if the protests spread to other countries.
 
Whatever you think of the protests themselves, you gotta agree it was immensely dumb of the organizers to just carry on and bury their heads in the sand and wish very hard for the problem to blow over on its own
This, 100%.
They must have known they would never manage the finish in Madrid. I was surprised they didn't just call it after yesterday tbh, but otherwise surely they could have cut today's stage in half and finished somewhere innocuous on the route. At this point, don't even publicise it. Just tell the teams.
 
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