When the Vuelta a España's riders and teams woke up this morning in Andorra, the marks from the huge hailstones that impacted on their arms during the storm-struck cancellation of stage 3 will likely have faded. But the memories of one of the most unusual days in recent Grand Tour history – those will take some time to go.
To recap briefly, with 15 kilometres to go, a very heavy thunderstorm morphed into an even heavier hailstorm, forcing the stage, finishing 2,000 metres above sea level in the Pyrenees at Fort Romeu, to be suspended and riders to seek shelter as best they could.
The race was both literally and metaphorically frozen, and after a transfer to Andorra for today's stage, normal service should be resumed for the first major mountain showdown of the race.
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If the final consequences are fairly straightforward, how events unfolded in the peloton, with temperatures of around 30 degrees at the start in Gruissan, were, to say the least, dramatic. Storm warnings were circulating, but for later in the day – around 6 PM – so some teams, like EF Education-EasyPost, were prepared for that. But as for outright cancellation and the scale of the extreme weather that afflicted the Vuelta, that was another story.
"We did know that the temperatures were going to drop a lot, with nine or ten degrees expected in the finish line and rain maybe for the last 30 or 40 kilometres," EF head sports director at the Vuelta, Juanma Garate, told Cyclingnews.
"In fact, that rain set in slightly closer to the line, but the temperatures were falling fast.
"What we didn't expect was such a violent storm. It's always possible that it'll hail, that happens in summer storms, but we were lucky, too, because it started to hail really hard, and they couldn't take any other decision but stop the race.
"It was impossible to ride on the asphalt, and it was impossible for us, because we couldn't see anything from the cars."
Luckily, as emerged later, there was a hotel just where the race stopped, with one race official who knew of its location, opting to try to keep the peloton riding until they reached it and then giving the order to stop.
"In fact every rider sought shelter where they could," Garate said. "It's true that the main peloton could get off and go into the hotel, but then there were a lot of riders who'd been dropped" – on the immediately preceding Cat.1 Col de Mont-Louis climb – "who simply got shelter wherever they could.
"There were riders who got into spectators' cars, others who stood under trees, everybody just stopped where they could. The hailstones themselves, though, were large enough to mark riders' arms and legs with their impact," Garate said.
Flashbacks to the Tour de Suisse
Regarding EF's riders, Richard Carapaz and Juan Felipe Rodriguez went directly into the hotel; another two hid under trees opposite – "But we got them out of there and immediately put them in the hotel."
"So I had four of them located, but there were another four who were a bit further back in the race, who were missing. One of them got in a spectator's car, another, Darren Rafferty, got into the second team car, Alistair MacKellar was under a spectator's umbrella, Markel Beloki was underneath some kind of plant…" added Garate.
"Then finally when the hail eased back a bit, we could call them up, and we all regrouped in the hotel.
"We had hot water bottles, they got changed right away, and we were well organised, as we had two vans behind the race, they'd just done the feed, so we had enough staff to organise things."
Garate was amongst those present who had experience of a previous major hailstorm in a race, which happened in the Tour de Suisse in 2007. That was so severe, he said, that some team cars ended up with their windscreens broken, although in Garate's case, it ended in rather more surreal (and amusing) fashion.
"I drove into somebody's garage without even knowing if the race had stopped, along with some riders, and then we realised the race was suspended," he said.
"There was a child's bathing pool there in the garage, and I saw a rider under a tree, taking shelter, but the problem was the tree was breaking apart because the hailstones were the size of golf balls and the rider was yelling in panic.
"So I put the kid's mini bathing pool on my head to keep the hail and rain off, and went out to rescue him."
But on a much more serious or less surreal note, that previous experience brought a lesson with it that Garate could use on Wednesday evening. "As soon as they said the race was stopping, the first thing I said to the riders was – find shelter! Then we'd sort out what we needed to sort out, later."
Communication was anything but easy at the height of the storm, Garate said, because the noise from the hail was so loud it was almost impossible to hear.
"I was driving quite slowly so we could communicate better with the riders on the roadside," he said. "I went past James Shaw when he was under a tree and he told me to stop because he could see me. But I could barely see him."
What Garate confirmed, though, was that given the circumstances in the race, it was certainly the best idea to stop and the best moment, too. There were two riders up ahead, but with a scant 20-second lead.
"If it'd been a three-minute gap, somebody might be more disappointed, but under the circumstances it was more than comprehensible. Nobody questioned it."
The question of long-term effects of such an abrupt change of weather conditions on the Vuelta peloton's health remains to be seen. EF were able to get their riders in dry clothes quickly, "but I did see some other riders from other teams still shivering and in their wet clothes an hour later. So we'll see what happens there."
"The organisation handled it all very well, because the race vehicles themselves were blocking the road. Very fortunately there was a roundabout just where the hotel was, so the French and Spanish police could free up one side, allow the buses to turn around and then we could head to Andorra," said the experienced DS.
"We also made sure in our team that one of us – in this case, me – stayed in the car so we could keep the instructions and relay them on to the rest of the team via radio. And they told us not to move until the buses came because there were risks of another big storm, and they told us the best way to get to Andorra to avoid that, too." Most of the riders, too, were in the hotels by 9pm.
At the very least, the weather has improved for Tuesday's stage, Garate said, and it is to be hoped that things turn around now in that regard for the Vuelta. As he put it, "We'll hope for better days."
In fact, one question that could trouble the race is extreme heat in Andalucia in the second half of the race, with temperatures there currently in the mid to high thirties. But for now, the Vuelta is just relieved to have got through the drama of stage 3 relatively unscathed.
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