Kwiatkowski lashes out after Vuelta fiasco: "Someone allowed it to happen and looked the other way"

Protesters, who had been busy making their voices heard throughout the Vuelta, won the battle on Sunday in Madrid. They barricaded the road for the riders and at the finish line and the podium for the celebrations, people took to the streets en masse. They destroyed barriers, leaving the organisers with no choice but to stop the race and send the riders back to their hotels.

As a result, we did not see the end of a race that had been dominated by pro-Palestinian protests for three weeks. Jonas Vingegaard sat silently in a car as the overall winner, while hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of protesters took over the center of Madrid. We had never seen anything so extreme in the Vuelta before, unless it was stage 11 in Bilbao. That stage was abandoned.

Kwiatkowski experienced the protests firsthand for three weeks on behalf of INEOS, and now that the Vuelta is over, he made his feelings clear in a strong statement. “If the UCI and the responsible bodies couldn’t make the right decisions early enough, then long-term it’s very bad for cycling that the protesters managed to get what they wanted.”

“You can’t just pretend nothing is happening,” Kwiato continued. “From now on, it’s clear for everyone that a cycling race can be used as an effective stage for protests and next time it will only get worse, because someone allowed it to happen and looked the other way.”

It is unclear who Kwiatkowski is referring to in his text, but it is a serious accusation, implying that the protests were not prevented and stopped at all costs. "It’s a shame for the fans who came here to watch a great event. Personally, I would have preferred to know in advance that the race was cancelled rather than being led to believe everything was going to be fine."