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The peloton was preparing for a bunch sprint after a flat day of racing at La Vuelta, only for the big favourite for the stage, Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) to be taken out of the fight for the win in the final kilometres.
The crash appeared to be caused by an overlap of wheels with EF Education-EasyPost's lead-out rider and a Alpecin-Deceuninck rider, who came down first at high speed and brought down about 10 other riders including Australian Chris Hamilton (dsm-firmenich).
The Australian somehow managed to land on his feet as a number of his teammates and other riders came down, but without his bike it was too late to try and remount and rejoin the race, so he offered assistance to downed teammate Tobias Bayer.
"One and a half kilometres to go, maybe just before, I don't really know what happened with the crash but I had to stop and jump off my bike, so was unable to sprint," said Groves.
"But no injuries, I'll need to watch it back, but I was super lucky I ended up unclipping and running off the bike almost. I was feeling good, so all in all, I'd say unlucky in the finish."
It meant that Groves also missed taking any points in the sprint to the finish. He actually extended his lead in the green jersey after taking second at the intermediate sprint, but will have to wait for his jersey win to be confirmed on Stage 21.
He has a lead now of 53 points, a comfortable buffer over second-placed Remco Evenepoel, but the Australian is very unlikely to figure in the Stage 20 points, meaning that Evenepoel will likely shorten the advantage if he gets himself into the breakaway again on the Liege-Bastogne-Liege-like stage. If he does take home the final points jersey in Madrid, he will become the first Australian rider to do so at La Vuelta.
“I still got some points in the intermediate,” said Groves. “It’s really unfortunate to not sprint today, but it’s the risk we take when we are missing some guys in the lead-out. Sometimes you have to take the sprint from within the bunch, and today we did that. Unfortunately, I was behind the crash."
La Vuelta continues with stage 20, a hilly stage that will offer the final opportunity for a major change on the general classification. Watch from 7:45pm AEST on SBS On Demand, with the broadcast on SBS VICELAND from 8.30pm AEST.
