Take2 weeks ago
When Pogačar pointed the peloton left into a hotel, every team was suddenly on its own — buses were stranded beyond the finish line, staff scrambled in real time, and Wout van Aert ended up in a roadside van before anyone reached him. Grand Tour infrastructure doesn't have a protocol for this.
The fragmentation was the story: team buses had to drive back from the finish to collect riders who were already dispersed across whatever shelter they'd found. Van Aert — one of the last to reach his team — described it plainly: «First I took shelter in a van and then nearly all the riders ended up in a nearby hotel.» EF Education-EasyPost's Georg Steinhauser, at least, had the presence of mind to get on an indoor trainer while waiting — one of the few documented attempts to stay race-ready during an unplanned stop of indeterminate length.
Sources