Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2025, Stage 16: Poio/Poyo – Castro de Herville/Erville (167.9k)

[gunara]

A sorry finale to the most romantic breakaway duo possible

 

[Brullnux]

Depends really, don't see this happening further north in Europe. Or atleast not on this scale

Montreal is already under pressure.

 

[Unchained]

This is why cycling will always remain a niche mini sport.
This is not serious.

Ridiculous, rolling enclosure makes race logistics impossible, you can't put up fencing and have physical barriers for @150-250 kilometers. There is an assumption of good faith by motorists, home owners, business owners, fans and if any on of those groups or others don't fully cooperate you get something like this.
I have been to races were people have driveway blocked or woke up to find vehicle towed away or people are driving and they are unable to cross the race route because of road closure and they freak out! Start screaming, fighting with people it's part of every sport that uses massive amounts of public roads as the race course. Show me a marathon or 10k fun run, charity bike event or walk for cancer or something else.. Dozens of people are furious about roads being closed.
Closing many, many kilometers of roads may look routine but it's really really difficult and complicated. And all race routes need safety valves and when they don't have them, you need helicopters for medical evac which is expensive and complicated. With rolling enclosure you have ambulance and medical services within a small separation, much safer and cheaper.
On hilly , mountain roads, light rain, excellent decision to completely delete some dangerous elements of the race. We still get a race, slightly shorter and nobody is in harms way.

 

[TourOfSardinia]

A sorry finale to the most romantic breakaway duo possible

ber.nalan.da

 

[Rou]

Ridiculous, rolling enclosure makes race logistics impossible, you can't put up fencing and have physical barriers for @150-250 kilometers. There is an assumption of good faith by motorists, home owners, business owners, fans and if any on of those groups or others don't fully cooperate you get something like this.
I have been to races were people have driveway blocked or woke up to find vehicle towed away or people are driving and they are unable to cross the race route because of road closure and they freak out! Start screaming, fighting with people it's part of every sport that uses massive amounts of public roads as the race course. Show me a marathon or 10k fun run, charity bike event or walk for cancer or something else.. Dozens of people are furious about roads being closed.
Closing many, many kilometers of roads may look routine but it's really really difficult and complicated. And all race routes need safety valves and when they don't have them, you need helicopters for medical evac which is expensive and complicated. With rolling enclosure you have ambulance and medical services within a small separation, much safer and cheaper.
On hilly , mountain roads, light rain, excellent decision to completely delete some dangerous elements of the race. We still get a race, slightly shorter and nobody is in harms way.

You are right. This is the nature of the sport. It will not change and that's why cycling will always remain a lesser sport.
People were furious when Pogacar was not named sportsman of the year in 2024.
With a sport that is so variable on outside factors it won't happen.

 

[scribers]

A sorry finale to the most romantic breakaway duo possible

Needs some Fausto and some Lopez for extra spice

 

[Unchained]

Everyone is safe. Paramount

 

[AnotherArmChair]

A sorry finale to the most romantic breakaway duo possible

yes the most popular duo imaginable ...both great riders but made low by terrible crashes

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Maybe some of you missed this:

MODERATOR
Just don't say anything at all about protests, yet alone the situation in Gaza.

Admins have made it clear that their threshhold is very strict.

I will lock the thread if keeping on top of it proves impossible.If people persist, I'll be back to giving multiple suspensions. The position of the publishers, without whom we don't have this thing, is clear.

I don't want to start flinging around bans again like last week, but I will if people are ignoring this.

The position of the publishers is clear, and without them we don't have a forum.

 

[red_flanders]

If they want to save the Vuelta I think they have to ban all spectators from the final climbs beginning tomorrow.

The tactics will just adapt to those kind of changes. Today sounds like they started 3km from the finish to avoid what I assume may have been a police presence at the finish (total speculation on the last).

 

[Mayomaniac]

why cant they negotiate with the protestors and say we will give you a n enclosure under the podium to protest in if you clear the finish line..you will get TV time there

you can have your flags and banners there ..it might not work but worth a try

That's how things usually go at the Giro and at most races in general, but these protests seem to break the unwritten laws of the sport when it comes to handling protests. That mainly works if people actually want that kind of visibility (and the Vuelta hasn't been shy when it comes to showing the flags and banners, tbf), but if they want to have a cheap mediastunt by crashing the race instead you can't do a lot.
Anyway, I hope everyone who made a rider crash has to deal with legal repercussions, such behaviour shouldn't be encouraged.

 

[Boehmand]

Marca posted a video of the demonstration, and also of a tree that appears to have been felled on purpose to block the road - it is unclear to me however if the two are directly related.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1965429383906328725

View: https://x.com/marca/status/1965429383906328725

 

[Sciatic]

Only partly joking--they should have a "secret" finish line shared only with all the teams/riders and keep the original finish line in the public announcements. Honestly, though I wouldn't want them to do that because it also deceives the thousands of fans who trek to the final climbs or finish lines. We haven't discussed that here: the riders still got to get in a race today (if somewhat neutered) but all the fans on the final climb got nothing for their efforts except being pissed off. They're among the biggest losers in all this. Knowing how much pre-planning, $, and effort I put into going to see several Tour summit stage finishes, I can't imagine how devastated I would be to not even see the riders go by!

 

[Red Rick]

Only partly joking--they should have a "secret" finish line shared only with all the teams/riders and keep the original finish line in the public announcements. Honestly, though I wouldn't want them to do that because it also deceives the thousands of fans who trek to the final climbs or finish lines. We haven't discussed that here: the riders still got to get in a race today (if somewhat neutered) but all the fans on the final climb got nothing for their efforts except being pissed off. They're among the biggest losers in all this. Knowing how much pre-planning, $, and effort I put into going to see several Tour summit stage finishes, I can't imagine how devastated I would be to not even see the riders go by!

Tbh, we saw the protesters on the Angliru. They were too lazy to climb all the way up so they were somewhere near the bottom of the climb. So all high MTFs where car access is restricted should do the job.

 

[Boehmand]

Maybe some of you missed this:

Are you saying we cannot report what is actually happening, like a tree being felled to block the road?

 

[RedheadDane]

We haven't discussed that here: the riders still got to get in a race today (if somewhat neutered) but all the fans on the final climb got nothing for their efforts except being pissed off. They're among the biggest losers in all this. Knowing how much pre-planning, $, and effort I put into going to see several Tour summit stage finishes, I can't imagine how devastated I would be to not even see the riders go by!

Is it bad that I'm sort of starting wondering what would happen if all the fans out on the route decided that they'd had enough?

 

[Devil's Elbow]

MODERATOR
Just don't say anything at all about protests, yet alone the situation in Gaza.

Admins have made it clear that their threshhold is very strict.

I will lock the thread if keeping on top of it proves impossible.

If it is impossible to discuss even the purely sporting impacts of the protests, as seems to be the case based on what is getting deleted, then there is simply zero point in having this forum anymore because that's the most important thing there is to discuss these days from a sporting perspective.

It may be time to move the community elsewhere.

 

[Eddy Evenepoel]

yeah but peloton stopped racing so Gall didnt lose much

This isnt accurate. Bahrain rode all the way to the top, then Pidcock attacked in the downhill and then on the flat kilometers into the new finish line Jake Stewart pulled full for Ricitello on the front and then they did the classic "fake sprint" to the line.

Of course, if they had ridden the whole climb his time loss would be much bigger.

 

[Red Rick]

If it is impossible to discuss even the purely sporting impacts of the protests, as seems to be the case based on what is getting deleted, then there is simply zero point in having this forum anymore because that's the most important thing there is to discuss these days from a sporting perspective.

It may be time to move the community elsewhere.

Yes, it would truly render discussion of races where this does not happen completely impossible

 

[Sciatic]

Maybe some of you missed this:


I don't want to start flinging around bans again like last week, but I will if people are ignoring this.

The position of the publishers is clear, and without them we don't have a forum.

Could you help clarify--I thought the previous stance was that we couldn't discuss any of the political aspect of the protests but we could discuss direct impacts on the racing, which would include discussions of how the organizers should deal with this in the coming stages? Although I can understand that would probably leave a lot of gray area for you folks. Sorry for you all that you have to deal with it.

 

[Ripper]

Maybe some of you missed this:


I don't want to start flinging around bans again like last week, but I will if people are ignoring this.

The position of the publishers is clear, and without them we don't have a forum.

Understood

 

[Devil's Elbow]

If it is impossible to discuss even the purely sporting impacts of the protests, as seems to be the case based on what is getting deleted, then there is simply zero point in having this forum anymore because that's the most important thing there is to discuss these days from a sporting perspective.

It may be time to move the community elsewhere.

To add to this, there is also no forum rule that implies that the purely sporting impacts are out of bounds. Administrators not abiding by their own rules is a big red line being crossed, in my view

 

[Skalman]

Lol they should just cancel the Vuelta all together, this will just continue to happen and its impossible to take this edition serious.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

To avoid controversy, just award this Vuelta to Pogi or Remco and everyone can go home.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Are you saying we cannot report what is actually happening, like a tree being felled to block the road?

At present, I am acting at a higher level of caution than I did the other day. Look back in an hour or so, and if I don't have to keep firefighting I may well restore some.