Jonas Vingegaard’s first race of the 2024 season, O Gran Camiño, has been hit by bad weather and although the opening stage, a time trial in A Coruña, will go ahead, times on the day will not count towards the overall classification.
Strong winds have reached speeds of over 70km/h, according to local weather station alerts, and dubbed Storm Louis by meteorological services in France, which has also been affected.
The high winds have been blasting the A Coruña region of Galicia since early Thursday morning, along with heavy rain showers. The rain is expected to continue for the next three days.
Ahead of Thursday's opening time trial, race fencing was blown over by the winds all along the 14.8-kilometre out-and-back course, running along the seafront at A Coruña, circling a segment of open hillside and then finishing on another equally exposed summit underneath the Torre de Hercules lighthouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Only a handful of riders braved the weather conditions, but the wind was so strong they apparently found it impossible even to get on their TT bikes, let alone ride them.
Although the weather has now improved enough for the time trial to go ahead, with winds dropping considerably by mid-afternoon, teams and organisers agreed that it was still potentially too risky for times to count towards GC.
As a result, all the riders will start Friday’s stage 2, a 151km hilly leg running from Taboada to Chantada, with the same time on GC.
Organisers have yet to decide if the rider with the best time from the time trial will start, albeit symbolically, with the leader’s jersey on Friday, or if the one climb on the day, a cat. 4 ascent mid-way through the stage, will count towards the mountains classification.
Riders are also obliged to use usual road bikes, rather than TT bikes, as an extra security precaution given the risks from gusting winds. The time trial started at 14:45 local time, with Jonas Vingegaard, as the defending champion, due to roll down the start ramp at 16:52.
The decision for a partial neutralisation of the stage means that for the second year running, O Gran Camiño has run into difficulties on the opening day’s racing. Last year, the opening mass start stage was suspended completely when snow storms hit the second part of the course.
The organisers told AS newspaper on Wednesday that they would be using an innovatory system of portable weather stations to try to have the most accurate information possible when deciding whether a stage should go ahead of not. But for a short time trial running on an out-and-back course, all the information needed was immediately available.
