Riders and team staff alike at O Gran Camiño have praised the race organiser's decision to neutralise the times for the opening time trial stage for the GC after galeforce winds rendered the exposed course in A Coruña too risky to use time trial bikes.
The main reason for such widespread approval of the decision proved largely to be based on safety concerns, on a day when the stage came close to being cancelled completely, for what would have been the second year running.
Instead, the considerably improved weather conditions in the afternoon allowed the race to go ahead, albeit without the usual time gaps, meaning none of the GC riders were obliged to tackle the TT course at an all-out pace.
Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers) won the opening stage of the O Gran Camiño, though he and all riders begin again Friday with the overall classification.
Another curious side-benefit from the point of view of at least one rider from the five Continental teams taking part was that with no TT bikes allowed because of the weather, material-wise the playing field between the top flight WorldTour teams, with their comparatively huge financial firepower, and the much lower budget Conti' squads was temporarily levelled.
Compared with mid-morning, in any case, by the time the riders got on their bikes the galeforce winds had dropped notably and previously torrential rain showers had eased off. There were still very strong gusts of wind from time to time, though, and with some rubbish bins and barriers still lying on their sides as a result of the storm next to parts of the course, riders and team directors were understandably very cautious about how they tackled the time trial.
"I've just been around the course with Hugh [Carthy] and even with road bikes there were a couple of sketchy moments," EF Education-EasyPost sports director Tom Southam told Cyclingnews as he waited to escort another EF rider around the time trial.
"Such are the nature of TT bikes, disc wheel and deep wheels, it could be pretty dangerous out there with this wind.
"It's not the rain, there are plenty of parts of the course that are ok. But if you have the Froome incident in mind" - a reference to the Criterium du Dauphiné 2018 when a freak gust of wind saw Chris Froome crash very badly and suffer major injuries during training on his TT bike - "which is still fresh in a lot of people's minds, then I think they've made the right decision.
"For me, once you've accepted it's dangerous and you want to switch to [using] the road bikes, you can't say it's going to count for GC. The real question was basically if it's going to count or not."
The other episode still uppermost in many people's minds, of course, was the suspension of last year's opening stage of O Gran Camiño, which this partial neutralisation at least avoided.
According to Southam, one reason why some riders and teams wanted the race to go ahead on Thursday, albeit without the GC time gaps, was that they felt it was seriously bad luck for the organisers to be hit by two weather-related cancellations in the space of two years.
"Nobody wanted to just go home, to be honest, everybody feels a bit for them, you know - even the riders, just to cop it twice in a row. The organisers are doing their best to make this a great race, they're very accommodating and forward-thinking.
"So hopefully the guys are going to put on a good show, there's a race, and fingers crossed it doesn't affect things and they get a good run-out on their bikes."
Amongst the low-budget Conti teams, quite apart from the safety issues, California's Andrew Vollmer (Illes Balears Arabay Cycling) saw other benefits to the no-TT bikes rule, such as "It's good for me so I don't have a TT bike anyway, so I'm happy for that".
"It's kind of like - you'll lose quite a bit of time when you ride a road bike against a Visma guy on a TT bike. So [with this situation] I'm hyped."
Vollmer said that up to a point, when the suspension happened, it did not take him by surprise.
"I did this race last year, [back then] I was looking at the wheels in front of me and I realised it started snowing, and then everyone stopped and I was like 'oh shit.' But this is Galicia, there's going to be gnarly weather."
This time around, he said, when it came to doing the time trial itself, "I just tried to ride hard and not think about the wind, so I'm thankful for that."
And having had the chance to measure himself against Visma thanks to the harsh weather, on Friday's stage 2, Vollmer would be back to the Conti' equivalent of the day job in such races. Or as he put it, "After this, I'll just try to get in breakaways and hang on for dear life."
When it came down to riding the time trial itself, riders like Spain's Eugenio Sánchez (Kern Pharma) said that the tough weather conditions were not completely new terrain, but he appreciated the organisers' consideration for safety concerns all the same.
"It's not that new, we've had winds as strong as this in races in France and echelons too, but it's true that the wind was stronger than normal," he told Cyclingnews.
"When you're out there in the TT, you notice the wind, you really notice, particularly in the last three kilometres, where the wind was a strong cross-head. The important thing, though, is that the stage could take place."
This morning, seeing the rain tip down and the ultra-strong gust of winds outside his hotel room window "we'd already heard it was going to be rough weather, so we were mentalised for it".
"But I appreciate that they considered both our safety and the public's too - after all, there was a red alert for high winds in this area, at one point. They [the organisers] stopped and thought, 'Hey they're people too, let's bear that in mind.' And that's good."
