Former INEOS captain Luke Rowe reveals team car disaster at Amstel Gold Race: “We saw fallen riders everywhere”

Former pro cyclist and now directeur sportif Luke Rowe had a weekend to remember , for all the wrong reasons, at the Amstel Gold Race, where he somehow managed to get lost while driving the team car.

Now working behind the wheel for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, Rowe was caught up in the aftermath of a huge crash that disrupted the race more than 100 kilometres from the finish line. Speaking on Geraint Thomas’s Watts Occurring podcast, the Briton explained how the chaos unfolded.

"I was in the second follow car, so we were very far back," Rowe said. "And that can cause problems, especially if there is a mass crash."

As the team cars tried to navigate around the pile-up, Rowe and his colleagues had no choice but to wait. "We had to stop because of the crash," he recalled. "We had to crawl past them, car by car. We saw fallen riders everywhere. After five minutes of stopping, we went after an INEOS car."

It was at that point that things started to unravel.

"He went left, I went left. And suddenly we were no longer on the course. We had lost our way," Rowe explained. What followed was a detour through the narrow backroads and villages of Limburg in a bid to rejoin the convoy without further incident.

"But then we suddenly drove ahead of the race. And that's not allowed. Of course I didn't want to be seen, because if the jury sees that..." Rowe laughed, recalling how he scrambled to avoid further trouble. "Then I reversed into a driveway and had to hide the car. In the end we saw the whole race pass by, everything turned out fine."

It was a moment of light-hearted drama on an otherwise serious day of racing, but Rowe will likely chalk this one up as a learning experience in the life of a new directeur sportif. Navigating pelotons may have come naturally during his racing days, but the winding backroads of Limburg? Not so much!