Txomin Juaristi on his deer encounter at Vuelta: "It appeared out of nowhere and I took the full blow. I thought I was going crazy, and then I saw another one on top of the car"

Yesterday we lived a surreal episode at the Vuelta a Espana with a pack of deer deciding to greet the cyclists at the Vuelta up close.

Sadly, Txomin Juaristi and Giulio Ciccone weren't so happy about this deer meeting as they prefered to bow to the relatives of Santa Claus helper on the ground. In addition, the deer 'bought' couple of Euskaltel Euskadi bikes as they rolled through their spare bikes on top of the team car.

After the stage, Juaristi, still in pain from the blow he received, spoke with Cadena Ser colleague Borja Cuadrado, explaining what happened:

"I was racing, at kilometer 144 or so and out of nowhere a deer appeared and I took the full blow and I fell. Then when I was with the medical car more deer jumped out, they came at us from the left, I've already gone crazy. I saw a deer on top of the car, between the bikes and they broke two of the car's bikes, but well, I got a hard blow but for the moment I'm fine."

It was a terrible thing to happen, although these are things that can happen when entering natural parks. The important thing is that the animals were able to return to the forest without problems and that none of the cyclists were seriously injured. We regret the material damage to the Euskaltel bikes.