More than half of the WorldTour squads at the Étoile de Bessèges pulled out of the race in the middle of stage 3 after a non-race vehicle drove onto the race course just a day after a car on course had caused a big pileup on stage 2.
The Ineos Grenadiers, Lidl-Trek, Soudal-Quick Step, EF Education-EasyPost, Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and second-division teams Uno-X Mobility and Unibet-Tietema Rockets all quit the UCI 2.1-rated race relatively early on in stage 3. The mass exodus cut the Étoile de Bessèges field almost in half.
"Our team is one of the several that have decided to retire from today’s #EDB25 stage due to several incidents over motor vehicles being allowed onto the race course," read a post from Soudal-Quick Step on X.
"We find this unacceptable and decided not to rejoin the stage as we prioritise the safety of our rides and staff."
On Thursday, a driver drove a car onto the course in the direction of the peloton inside the final 20 km of stage 2. Although riders managed to avoid colliding with the car itself, several hit the deck in the process. Red Bull's Maxim van Gils was hospitalized after the crash.
The very next day, a car entered the course in the early goings of stage 3. The peloton avoided a crash but racing was halted as riders met with UCI commissaires. The stage was restarted, and shortened slightly, but racing resumed without several teams, who had decided instead to pull their squads out of the event entirely.
"Following another incident early in today’s stage involving a vehicle, our riders have decided not to continue and have retired from the stage," Lidl-Trek said on X, where multiple teams published statements on the incident. "The safety of our riders is paramount and we felt not enough was being done."
Those teams that did continue on in the race did so under increasingly challenging weather conditions. Lotto's Arnaud De Lie took his first win of the season at the end of the stage amid rain and whipping wind in the town of Bessèges itself.
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