{"id":674350,"date":"2026-07-05T02:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T02:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674350\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T02:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T02:09:10","slug":"not-the-way-we-wanted-to-start-the-tour-de-france-xds-astana-suffer-spectacular-crash-in-team-time-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/674350\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Not the way we wanted to start the Tour de France&#8217; &#8211; XDS Astana suffer spectacular crash in team time trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"elk-333f1bc4-d9c4-4f1e-ac05-9e7c787c396a\">While the television cameras were focussed on the fight for the first maillot jaune of the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/tour-de-france\/\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/tour-de-france\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/tour-de-france\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2026 Tour de France<\/a>, there was plenty of drama out of the spotlight as two teams suffered crashes during the stage 1 team time trial in Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately all of the riders finished, but <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/teams\/uci-worldtour\/2026\/xds-astana-team\/\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/teams\/uci-worldtour\/2026\/xds-astana-team\/\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"inline-link\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/teams\/uci-worldtour\/2026\/xds-astana-team\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">XDS Astana<\/a> saw three riders hit the deck after running over a storm drain cover midway through the 19.6km stage.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"elk-seasonal\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"elk-333f1bc4-d9c4-4f1e-ac05-9e7c787c396a-2\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">&#8220;No fractures or serious injuries for our riders, but Nicolas Vinokourov, Harold Tejada , and Simone Velasco did sustain abrasions and various bruises,\u201d the team reported.<\/p>\n<p>Latest Videos From<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" data-original-mos=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" class=\"rounded-[var(--image--border-radius,0)] block h-[18px] w-auto shrink-0 brightness-0 invert\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-new-v2-image=\"true\" data-original-mos=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/flexiimages\/gmvwmhupgi1715762145.svg\" class=\"rounded-[var(--image--border-radius,0)] max-h-12 w-auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">Velasco was the last-placed rider on the stage, nearly six minutes slower than Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who claimed the race lead. Nicolya Vinokourov, blood seeping out of wounds on his knee, finished 4:54 down, and Tejada was able to get up quickly to finish 2:46 down.<\/p>\n<p aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">XDS Astana finished last of the 23 teams, 2:18 behind Visma-Lease a Bike, with Sergio Higuita setting their time for the stage as their quickest rider.<\/p>\n<p>            You may like<\/p>\n<p aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"kiosq-b\">The Kazakh team weren&#8217;t the only ones to suffer a fall: Cofidis had their GC leader Guillaume Martin fall along with Cl\u00e9ment Berthet, but both riders finished the stage 3:34 down with scrapes and bruises.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8 \ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7 VIDEO: @LeTour The story of our day\u2026 Great preparation, big hopes, and then a crash that changed everything.Not the way we wanted to start the Tour de France, but we\u2019ll keep fighting! \ud83d\udcaa#XDSAstanaTeam #TDF2026\ud83c\udfa5 A.S.O. \/ XDS Astana Team pic.twitter.com\/npxx3k3L8a<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cantworkitout\/status\/2073496799667495224\" data-url=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cantworkitout\/status\/2073496799667495224\" target=\"_blank\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">July 4, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the television cameras were focussed on the fight for the first maillot jaune of the 2026 Tour&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-674350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}