The chaotic opening stage of the Volta ao Algarve has been cancelled, race organisers have said, after a large segment of the peloton mistakenly headed up the wrong side of the finishing straight.
The lead commissaries vehicle was allegedly directed off of the official route inside the final few hundred metres to the right-hand side of the roadside barriers and the majority of the peloton followed. That left Ineos Grenadiers rider Filippo Ganna to win the hugely diminished sprint among the riders who took the correct turning.
The organisation president and head of the Portuguese Cycling Federation Candido Barbosa told reporters at the finish that the decision had been taken to cancel the stage.
There were unconfirmed reports that Ganna, as the first rider to cross the line, would be awarded the yellow jersey so the race would have at least a nominal leader. However, as confusion continued at the finish area it was unclear if the ceremony would actually go ahead.
Finally, a subdued and confused crowd in the winner's podium was informed of the decision to not have any kind of ceremony except for the secondary classifications like the sprints and the King of the Mountains.
A visibly-irritated Ganna emerged from doping control and left the finish area, without receiving any prizes, either for the stage or the overall. The question of whether he would have the leader's jersey tomorrow remained up in the air but it seemed likely there would no times whatsoever, with all riders on the same time for the next day, a mountainous stage to Foia.
Full details of how the actual error that saw the race submerged in an utterly chaotic finish with few, if any, recent precedents in the sport did not appear at first. However, one race follower with long experience in the event and who was in a vehicle directly ahead of the event, claimed that the technical finale in Portimao, used in at least one previous edition of the race, was always susceptible to possible problems because of the way the race split at a roundabout.
"At 800 metres from the finish in that last roundabout, the signalling wasn't great, and the way off the route goes parallel to the finishing straight," they said.
"We got sent down there, I was lucky. But the riders all followed the television motorbike and they went straight on."
The initial situation at the finish was the assumption that as Ganna and some of the riders had gone down the right side of the road, they would be awarded the win. Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease A Bike) went over to Ganna where he was warming down and congratulated him for the win.
A fair number of riders were keen to underline that normally the Volta ao Algarve is a very well-organised event, regardless of its non-World Tour status and the fact that such a bizarre error dominoed into absolute chaos was anything but expected. Others, though, suggested that race organisers should be subject to the same 'yellow card' system recently introduced for riders.
The surreal scenes continued regardless, with Ganna initially talking to the media as if he was the winner at the podium - and clearly assuming that was the case - only to be followed seconds later by the race organiser, Candido Barbosa, telling the same journalists standing at the finish that the stage had been cancelled.
While Ganna headed to anti-doping control and waited for further developments, the news that the entire stage had been cancelled gradually became more and more clear: there would be no stage winner, no leader and a drastically reduced finishing ceremony to satisfy the large crowds opposite the podium.
As the gantries were removed and the crowds drifted away, the commissaires remained in a meeting, however, and a final official verdict on the consequences of one of the most surreal finishes in recent race history was yet to emerge.
