'The cruelty of cycling' - Vermaerke and UAE pick up pieces after Pogacar's Vuelta crash

For Kevin Vermaerke and the rest of Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad, the succession of events was hard to process. One moment, they were pulling together in support of Pogačar’s latest tilt at history. The next, they were bystanders in one of the few lows in the Slovenian’s remarkable story.

“We came here with one clear goal, to win with Tadej, and it was all going perfectly to plan,” Vermaerke told reporters in Villajoyosa ahead of stage 9.

“That’s the cruelty of cycling. In a split second, on the easiest day of the race so far, where you don’t expect anything to happen, the worst possible case scenario happens, and our race changes instantly.”

Vermaerke was part of the UAE guard guiding Pogačar through the closing kilometres of a stage. When he heard the familiar clatter of a crash behind him, he initially didn’t realise Pogačar was the man who had fallen. He skidded to a halt and waited when word filtered through his radio earpiece. 

“I was in front of him. There were three of us in front of Tadej,” Vermaerke told reporters before stage 9. “It was super-fast, we were going like 55-60k an hour before this climb, and it had gotten really stressful really for no reason. There was the bonus sprint coming up, but it was still 40k to go and nobody was going to explode the race on that climb. It was just a bit of a hectic moment.

“I could hear a crash somewhere behind but then on the radio we heard that Tadej had crashed and we all immediately stopped. When you don’t hear anything on the radio for a few minutes and he’s not coming, you know it’s not great…”

Although Pogačar sustained a concussion, a broken collarbone and a C7 cervical fracture in the crash, his initial instinct was to try to continue, but it was clearly impossible. Once Pogačar’s abandon was confirmed, his waiting teammates soft-pedalled together towards the finish in Xeraco.

“I think we were all a bit in shock that it happened so quick,” Vermaerke said. “I was talking to friends on other teams in the bunch, and it’s a shock for everybody. The race changes instantly and now everyone’s kind of reassessing what the new goal will be.”

There has been speculation that Pogačar’s crash was caused by a stray rock on the rock 32km from the finish of stage 8, though, like UAE sports manager Matxín Joxean Fernández, Vermaerke was reluctant to apportion any blame.

“There's probably a thousand rocks on the road that we ride through every day,” Vermaerke said. “At the end of the day, the roads are closed an hour or two before, so it’s impossible to completely make a road clean through for the 180k that we do. It’s just really unfortunate.”

Vermaerke did not, however, that it had been an unusually tense day on the Vuelta, particularly as the largely flat run to Xeraco had appeared to be something close to a transition day, with few willing attackers ahead of the inevitable bunch sprint.

“I think there was kind of a weird tension in the group all day,” Vermaerke said. “We had a big crash in the neutral already, but it was a flat sprint day, with no wind, no nothing, and only two Burgos riders who wanted to be in the breakaway.

“It should a super chill day, but there was a crash in the neutral, there was a crash in the final, and there were crashes before Tadej’s crash. It was just a nervous day all around.”

Pogačar had held a 3:50 lead over Enric Mas (Movistar) before his crash, and his abandon utterly changes the dynamic of the Vuelta, with the race for the red jersey now set to be a tight one.

The departure of the world champion also changes the job description for Vermaerke and his UAE teammates. After working in the service of Pogačar for the first week, their task now is to hunt stage victories in a bid to match the team’s haul of seven victories from last year’s Vuelta.

“The reality is we have a crazy strong team here,” Vermaerke said. “So far this week, we’ve been controlling and solely focusing on Tadej. Now the rest of us have to fill in the shoes that he left behind, so we’re just going be super aggressive.”