{"id":133535,"date":"2025-09-10T19:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T19:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/133535\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T19:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T19:49:13","slug":"you-can-see-the-aggression-in-their-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/133535\/","title":{"rendered":"You can see the aggression in their eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second time during this Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a>, a stage was not completed due to major protests. Demonstrators blocked the final climb in stage 15, so the stage was decided 8 kilometers before the finish line. The pressure on the peloton is increasing, and the protests are also becoming a lot more aggressive, as Dutchman Daan Hoole<\/a> has noticed.Egan Bernal ended up winning the fifteenth stage<\/a>, but his first WorldTour victory since the 2021 Giro d\u2019Italia was overshadowed by the chaotic circumstances. Things also went wrong during stage 11 to Bilbao: demonstrators at the finish made it impossible to declare a winner. The riders are fed up at this point.Hoole addressed Tuesday’s bizarre stage. \u201cI have to say, it\u2019s definitely getting more hostile and more unpleasant,\u201d the Dutchman told NOS<\/a>. \u201cIn the neutralized zone they threw tacks onto the road, so there were a lot of flat tires. Halfway through the stage, a few people tried to run into the peloton. Luckily, the police stopped them in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second time a Vuelta stage couldn\u2019t be completed. \u201cWhen we heard that the final climb had been shortened, it didn\u2019t affect me personally, since I wasn\u2019t going to climb it anyway. But it\u2019s definitely getting worse. Soon we won\u2019t be able to hold a normal cycling race anymore. This is already the second time we haven\u2019t been able to complete a stage as planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read on below the video!<\/p>\n

Hoole: “What can we even do at this point?”It gives the Lidl-Trek<\/a> rider a feeling of helplessness. \u201cIt started with people just standing alongside the road with flags, which is fine. That\u2019s their right, of course, to protest. But now it\u2019s becoming more and more hostile and more extreme. We\u2019ve already had a few moments where you\u2019re literally riding through crowds of people, and you can see the aggression in their eyes. Then you start thinking: what can we even do at this point?\u201d<\/p>\n

The demonstrators are protesting the genocide in Gaza and believe a team like Israel-Premier Tech has no place in the sport. They point to how Russian teams were banned after the war in Ukraine began. \u201cThere\u2019s obviously a team in the race that\u2019s backed by Israel, but for the rest of the peloton, this is becoming very frustrating,\u201d Hoole responded.<\/p>\n

The time trial specialist is mainly against how much the demonstrators are interfering with the race. \u201cI\u2019m not necessarily scared, and it\u2019s their right to protest. But it has to be safe and done the right way. I don\u2019t think this is the right way. And I honestly don\u2019t understand why we\u2019re the ones who have to suffer because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time during this Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, a stage was not completed due to major protests.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-133535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}