"Suddenly a rider came from behind" - UAE and Tudor explain how Mathys Rondel crashed into team car windshield

The first days of the Giro d'Italia have been negatively marked by the crashes; and on stage 5 one happened away from TV cameras which caused a great deal of concern. Mathys Rondel crashed into the UAE Team Emirates - XRG car, breaking the read windshield. However luckily, the Tudor Pro Cycling Team rider was uninjured from it. The incident has now been fully explained.

Following the stage, Tudor DS Matteo Tosatto confirmed to In de Leiderstrui that the Frenchman was not injured by the incident. “Mathys is ok. I was not there myself, but from what I understood it happened just after a descent. Mathys was coming back after a flat tyre. You arrive there frozen, and then suddenly a car stops in front of you...”

It was a chaotic day, with several riders coming down in the wet descents that marked the Giro's first mountain stage. Igor Arrieta and Afonso Eulálio, first and second on stage - and now GC too - both crashed separately in the final 15 kilometers.

At the start of the day however, the race broadcast revealed a broken rear windshield in the UAE team car. Later it was confirmed that Rondel was the rider that crashed into it.

Tosatto, a former pro himself who understands the situation from both sides, did not attribute the blame to anyone in the incident. “Mathys was right behind the car because he was coming back. It is a typical race situation, the kind you see so often. It is nobody’s fault".

As it turned out, it was none other than Joxean Matxin at the wheel of the affected UAE car. Speaking to the Dutch news outlet, the manager at UAE detailed the collision from his point of view.

“It was a complicated day for everyone. At the moment we stopped the car on the right, because a Lidl-Trek car had stopped in front of us, it was not only raining but also hailing. We were waiting until we could move again, and then suddenly a rider came from behind.”

The incident happened on a climb and at slow speeds, luckily reducing the consequences from the fall. There was a moment of consequence assessment afterwards, in which it was explained that the French climber only hit the glass with his helmet, causing it to break.

“We immediately heard that he was ok, and Tosatto confirmed that too. We asked about him straight away. Luckily it was not at a high speed. I think around 25 kilometres per hour,” Matxin explained.

“And I think our window broke because he hit it with his helmet. He did not go through the window. The most important thing is that he is ok.”

Rondel is starting stage 6 of the Giro still within GC contention, in 21st place - tied in time with the likes of Jonas Vingegaard and his own leader Michael Storer.