'It wouldn't surprise me if bodies go home in an ambulance' - Brennan sounds alarm over Vuelta heat

Although the day was won by his Visma | Lease a Bike teammate Wout van Aert, the demanding conditions were at the forefront of Matthew Brennan’s mind when he reached the finish of stage 15 of the Vuelta a España.

“Well, I wouldn’t do it again,” Brennan told Eurosport before examining the temperature reading on his power-meter.

“Yeah, I mean, on here we have 41°C average. And you know, that’s the average. When I was on the climb at the start, it was 44°C, and at that point you start thinking, ‘What are we doing?’ 

“A normal office person has to have their temperature 20°C or whatever and I’m sure the people in the UCI office will have theirs at 20°C as well, so I think when we’re out here slugging away for their sake… I mean, it’s not great, but we do it, and that’s the show we put on. But I think it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a few bodies going home in an ambulance tonight with a heat stroke.”

The Vuelta organisation announced on Saturday that it had decided to shorten stage 15 following meetings with rider representatives and after several successive days in which the peloton had raced in searing temperatures. 

Hugo Houle, Enric Mas and Jacopo Mosca were the designated CPA representatives on the Vuelta, but AS reported that Mas recused himself from the meetings due to his status as race leader, while Houle abandoned the race on Saturday. Their places were taken in the CPA delegation by Steven Kruijswijk and Michael Gogl.

“It was the riders’ initiative. They proposed invoking the extreme temperature protocol,” Vuelta director Javier Guillén told reporters before the start of stage 15. “There were meetings, suggestions and we took them into consideration. We’ve had several days of very high temperatures, and we decided to adapt the stage to these circumstances.”

Despite the soaring temperatures, the shortened stage 15 was raced at high intensity across rugged terrain. Visma controlled the peloton for much of the stage, ostensibly on behalf of Brennan, but it was his teammate Van Aert who won the day after attacking to form a five-man winning move with 30km to go.

It was Van Aert’s second win of the Vuelta and Visma’s fifth in total after Brennan notched up a hat-trick on his Grand Tour debut. The 21-year-old acknowledged that he is eager for more when the race resumes after Monday’s second and final rest day.

“I think the boys are ready,” Brennan said. “We’ve got a lot of motivation from what we’re doing. I mean, what stage are we on now? 15? And we’ve picked up a third win so far, so why not go for more? Why not go for six, seven victories? Some people are going to clip that now, aren’t they? But yeah, we’ll see what we can do…”