Primoz Roglic on Friday blamed rival Fred Wright for the crash that brought the Slovenian's hopes of taking the Vuelta lead to a bloodied early end.
Roglic, the three-time defending Vuelta champion, had shaken off leader Remco Evenepoel and was sprinting for stage victory and bonus points on Tuesday when the accident happened.
Barely 100m from the line, Roglic made contact with Wright, lost control at high speed, smashed onto the tarmac and suffered injuries that forced him to abandon."This was not okay," Roglic said in an interview published on the web site of his Jumbo-Visma team, singling out Wright, a Briton who rides for the Bahrain team."The way this crash happened is unacceptable.
Not everyone saw it correctly. The crash was not caused by a bad road or a lack of safety but by a rider's behaviour. I don't have eyes on my back.