It’s a Thursday in late August, the Vuelta a España is in full swing. We’ve been treated to Wout van Aert sprinting to first and second places, back in the sort-of green jersey, which is a familiar and therefore comforting sight. As well as another Vuelta déjà vu: Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) crossing a Spanish Grand Tour finish line first for the sixth consecutive year, and then pulling on yet another red jersey.
As befits the final Grand Tour of the year, for those in Europe who are maybe not hardcore Vuelta fans, you can do as the Spanish do and take a siesta before tuning in for the final couple of hours. For the American cycling fan, maybe they’ve had enough early mornings to catch the starts of stages so far this summer, or for Australians too many light nights of early kilometres.
But stage 6 of the Vuelta was worth being prompt for. Not just because it turned out we got lots of early breakaway action, with more than 30 riders heading off the front and getting a gap of a minute and a half before they were reeled in, but also because the stage began in a giant supermarket/shopping centre!
You likely read Iain Treloar’s wonderful fever dream, imagining a few weeks ago what it would be like to be an innocent shopper on the day the Vuelta came to their tills, but now we have real-life, hard-hitting evidence of what it was like when the Vuelta a España started from a supermarket.
First of all, as Spanish journalist Borja Cuadrado points out, this is the first time the Vuelta has ever started from inside a shopping centre. Of course, you think, but wait until the end of this article for a reminder that the Vuelta does not mind messing about with the concept of the start line of a bike race.
Now, with the stage starting at 1PM local time, but TV coverage not beginning for another two hours (on today of all days!), we had to rely, like it’s the olden days, on reporters on the ground to bring us the information and scenes of what was going on, which in this very specific case meant scrolling Twitter until your fingers hurt, eyeballs bleed, and brain starts to fog up.
Originally, with the start being listed as a Carrefour, the brand of a ubiquitous European supermarket chain, we presumed a traditional aisles-and-trolley-based set-up. But below, we see Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s press officer Stephanie Constand showing us Primož Roglič, the red jersey, entering into a grander shopping centre. Cycling Weekly did some digging and found out this commercial centre contains a Primark (clothes shop), cinema, a couple of cafés and a mobile phone shop.
The scenes show kiosks either left deserted by the convenience of buying things from the internet, or merely shut down for the day because the Vuelta was in town and if you’re just trying to keep your head down and sell a few phone cases on a stall inside the city of Jerez’s shopping mall, would you honestly bother going into work that day?
Roglič joins the back of the rollout queue, before presumably being shuffled through to the front as the red jersey, for the day’s start line photos with local dignitaries.
The riders would have likely been grateful for the cover from the sun, with scorching temperatures at the Vuelta currently allowing for Astana Qazaqstan support staff to fry eggs using only the power of the sun.
Finally, after nearly half an hour of recaps at the top of the day’s live broadcast, we were treated to a handful of seconds of the scenes inside the supermarket. First of all, we watched a man and a woman, presumably local politicians, standing in front of the riders on the start line popping lightbulbs inside a cardboard recycling bin that stated in no uncertain terms via easy-to-understand diagrams that its purpose was to temporarily house lightbulbs on their way to being recycled. They also then cut a ribbon that didn’t stretch across the width of the start line, and looked rather silly if we’re being honest. We would have loved to provide you with visual evidence of what we (and maybe you) watched this morning, but Discovery+ now blocks you from taking screenshots. That’s the thanks you get for coughing up the money and not using Tiz, I guess.
Okay, but fortunately, some beautiful soul was on hand to video the riders passing through the shopping centre on their phone. The sound of freehubs ricochets off of the high ceilings, the flags don’t flutter, because we’re inside. But imagine the feeling of tyres on that supermarket flooring. Delicious.
Luckily, photos then started to drip though, showing the scenes in all of their true glory.
Something that may have already occurred to you: how did the two competing teams sponsored by rival supermarket chains (Intermarché-Wanty and Lidl-Trek) react to being force to ride through a competitor to the company that pays their wages?
Well, both were obviously on immediate internet manoeuvres, Intermarché retweeting a video of their star rider Biniam Girmay smiling as he walked through an Intermarché supermarket, with accompanying text saying it was the best supermarket out there.
Meanwhile, Lidl-Trek, who have their own rules for riders and staff on what to do when shopping at rival supermarkets, decided to photoshop the Vuelta peloton into a Lidl supermarket, which if you think about it is much cheaper and easier to pull-off than putting a bike race inside an actual store.
While one – presumably grumpy – person online bemoaned the fact Vuelta a España stages have previously started from the Burgos cathedral and were now reduced to well … potentially the reduced section, another pointed out we are almost 10 years to the day when the Vuelta’s stage 3 started from an aircraft carrier in Cadiz.
Here are the riders milling about, waiting for sign-on in the bright sunshine, whilst fans take photos of them from above.
And here are the riders heading out for the stage, which would be won by Michael Matthews ahead of Dan Martin.
And here’s Philippe Gilbert, looking very happy he got to have a go at sitting in the cockpit and wear the big helmet.
I wonder what we’ll get in the 2034? The organisers already discussing passing through a football stadium during the half time break of a game. So we’ll have to dream even bigger. Maybe they could all attach parachutes and launch off the side of a cliff for the day’s rollout? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
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