Should Movistar have waited?

Nairo Quintana’s Movistar blue train kept speeding ahead towards the Blockhaus climb with the sounds of brakes screeching and carbon cracking behind. Shortly after a slight downhill, the Abruzzese road tilted upwards and Quintana ploughed on to his stage win. But should the Movistar riders have paused their effort and waited?

“The best decision on a sporting front would have been to slow down for one or two minutes,” said Matt White, Adam Yates’s sports director at Orica-scott.

“It would’ve given time for guys to get off the deck. There were clear key favourites there. There was no need to push the pace as they did. It’s disappointing.”

While Yates got going again on the same bike but never quite made the junction back to the leaders, Geraint Thomas and others took more time to pick themselves up and change bikes.

“It was something that shouldn’t happen in a race, but sometimes does,” race director Mauro Vegni said. “I’m sorry about it, many important riders were involved and it ruins the race, this special edition. In that situation, though, it’s hard to understand what happened.

“For sure, Movistar would’ve known there was a crash, but wouldn’t have known who was in there right away.”

However, as members of Sky acknowledged, Movistar’s high pace was not a reaction to the crash but a tactic they’d already committed to.

“Everyone has their opinion about those situations, we’ve seen thousands of crashes like that,” Movistar sports director, José Luis Arrieta, said. “But the race was already on.

“Nothing had changed in our tactic, which was obvious at 100 kilometres out. We continued with that plan,” he added.