Coming out of the press room of stage 16 of the Back to Spain early on Tuesday evening, one single phenomenon immediately made it clear that this was no normal day at the races: the noise.
Even from over a kilometre away from the race route, the chants of pro-Palestinian demonstrators standing on the roadside were plainly audible. It helped, of course, that the finale of stage 16 ran through a shallow, semi-rural valley just outside the city of Vigo, so the traffic noise was much lower than in a city.
There was room, as ever in tense situations, for jokes to arise. “Miguel Angel López is a visionary, he could see this coming”, one reporter at the scene wisecracked, referring to the Colombian racer’s decision to quit the race mid-stage on an almost identical route through Galicia four years ago.
“It’s a very complicated situation, difficult to digest, we’ve had problems with the weather, and that’s out of control,” Ezequiel Mosquera, the director of Galicia’s top stage race, O Gran Camiño, told Eurosport.
And as the buses rolled away in search of their riders at the stage 16 finish, and the protesters’ chants continued, one young fan asked plaintively, “Where is the finish now? Where are the riders?”
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