"This is bad publicity for cycling" - Lotto DS fumes at farcical finish to stage 1 of 2025 Volta ao Algarve

We're likely to be talking about the chaos and confusion at the end of stage 1 of the 2025 Volta ao Algarve for a long time, as the cycling world continues to be in shock at the farcical finish to the day, which saw more than half the peloton get lost on the finishing straight.

Lotto sports director Nikolas Maes was among the cars on the stage, and afterwards he vented his anger at the situation in post-stage comments collected by Sporza. "I have seen a lot, but I have not experienced this yet," he began his reflections. "This is bad publicity for cycling. Our boys had done a reconnaissance yesterday and everyone knew you had to take the left side."

In the finale though, the peloton followed the motorbikes to the right hand side, ending up on the other side of the barriers and amongst the crowd whilst INEOS Grenadiers' Filippo Ganna crossed the line relatively unchallenged.

“I was driving car number 21 myself and maybe the situation had already changed, but when I passed it, it was absolutely not clear at that point whether you had to go left or right,” explains the Lotto man disappointedly, putting blame on race organisers rather than the riders. "Riders have a high heart rate at such a moment and are full of lactate: compare it to an animal in a cage that follows its path. Then I understand that they ride wrong if it is not 100 percent clear."