{"id":658653,"date":"2026-05-08T23:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T23:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658653\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T23:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T23:19:11","slug":"huge-crash-sees-kaden-groves-hit-the-deck-in-opening-sprint-of-giro-ditalia-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658653\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge crash sees Kaden Groves hit the deck in opening sprint of Giro d’Italia 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

An enormous high speed crash in the final kilometre of the Giro d’Italia’s opener has denied Australian Kaden Groves a chance of wearing the race’s pink jersey.<\/p>\n

As the peloton raced towards the finish line, Norwegian rider Erlend Blikra of Uno-X Mobility appeared to clip someone’s wheel with 600 metres to go, creating a cascade of chaos behind him as he slid on the tarmac.<\/p>\n

Groves was one of the riders to come down most heavily, with his Alpecin-Premier Tech team saying he suffered abrasions to both shoulders, his calf and elbow.<\/p>\n

But they confirmed that the 27-year-old is expected to start tomorrow’s second stage without too many issues.<\/p>\n

In the reduced sprint, Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step) out-fought Tobias Lund Andresen (Decathlon CMA CGM) to claim victory and with it, the leader’s jersey.<\/p>\n

“It’s a big emotion. I’m so proud of my team and my performance,” 22-year-old Frenchman Magnier said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was very hectic in the finale because it was an easy day before the sprint so everyone was really fresh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We tried to be in a good position before the narrow road where the crash happened. Jasper [Stuyven] did an amazing job and I could finish it off, it’s amazing.”<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Paul Magnier won the opening stage in a reduced sprint. (Getty Images: Tim de Waele)<\/p>\n

The opening stage, a largely flat, 147km ride hugging the Black Sea coastline from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Nessebar to Burgas was always likely to end in a sprint.<\/p>\n

Manuele Tarozzi (Bardiani CSF 7 Saber) and Diego Pablo Sevilla (Polti VisitMalta) broke away early but never established a lead of more than a couple of minutes before being hauled in with just over 20km remaining.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Before the calamitous finale, the biggest concern was whether the entire peloton would be able to start the race after illness swept through the field.<\/p>\n

Three Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9 riders suffered from abdominal pain, diarrhoea, fever and vomiting, and were briefly taken to hospital, including top Belgian sprinter Arnaud De Lie.<\/p>\n

Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9 were among several teams to be impacted, with the blame directed at manure spread on the road at Sunday’s Famenne Ardenne Classic.<\/p>\n

“We have heard that several teams have been affected and that some have had entire squads in hospital,” Lotto-Intermarch\u00e9 sports director Maxime Bouet told media on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“I know other teams have had the same issue. It is digestive problems \u2014 diarrhoea and vomiting. Our riders went to hospital because as soon as they stood up, they felt nauseous and could not stay on their feet. So we told them to go to hospital immediately. I heard it was the same at other teams.”<\/p>\n

Saturday’s second stage sees riders hit the hills for the first time in the race, with some 2,600 metres of climbing to negotiate as the peloton travels 221km from Burgas on the coast through the Balkan valleys to Veliko Tarnovo, with a stinging third category climb to the Lyaskovets Monastery Pass coming just 11km from the finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An enormous high speed crash in the final kilometre of the Giro d’Italia’s opener has denied Australian Kaden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,26014,318325,784,163619,314682,318323,23919,318324,318322,85,180805],"class_list":["post-658653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bulgaria","tag-burgas","tag-cycling","tag-giro-ditalia","tag-grand-tour","tag-grande-partenza","tag-kaden-groves","tag-nessebar","tag-pink-jersey","tag-sports","tag-stage-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658653","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=658653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}