A crash in the second half of yesterday’s Vuleta a España opening team time trial spelled disaster for Team Astana as four of its riders came together and crashed. In the incident, which was not picked up by the TV cameras, Enrico Gasparotto, Paolo Tiralongo, Alexandre Dyachenko and Andriy Zeits went down, leaving the Kazakh team with just five men to ride together to the finish.
All of the crashed riders managed to finish, but Gasparotto and Tiralongo were particularly badly hurt and were taken to hospital straight after the stage. Unfortunately for Amstel Gold Race winner Gasparotto however, he didn’t manage to cross the line in time to avoid the stage’s time limit, but x-rays confirmed that he had fractured his collarbone.
“Coming home from the Vuelta a bit too early…” he wrote on his Twitter feed. “Broken collarbone in 3 places... Bad luck?”
He also posted a picture of himself dressed in hospital scrubs, with his right arm in a sling.
The team had posted what turned out to be the fifth fastest time at the 8.1km intermediate checkpoint - and at the time was second fastest - but the disruption of the crash, and the reduced personnel, meant that it slumped to eleventh by the finish in Pamplona’s famous bullring.
“Today’s result is not important,” said Astana team manager Giuseppe Martinelli. “It is much more important to know how Tiralongo and Gasparotto are doing. They are currently in hospital for a series of tests and we will find out whether or not they can continue the Vuelta.
“I am really sorry for them, especially since we were having a good race, placing second at the intermediate checkpoint at 3” from Omega Pharma-Quick Step.”
“We were going really well until we had a crash,” confirmed Astana rider Andrey Kashechkin. “Enrico Gasparotto, Paolo Tiralongo, Alexandre Dyachenko and Andriy Zeits have been injured. Without this crash, I believe we could have made the top three.”
So far there has been no confirmed news about Tiralongo, so Astana will be expected to take the start of the second stage, between Pamplona and Viana, already down to eight men.