BarcelonaThe storms on Saturday spoiled what was one of the first macro events organized in the city of Barcelona under the baton of the new mayor of the PSC, Jaume Collboni. The first downpour caught the first cyclists facing the time trial, but by the time the last team left the heavy downpour had left much of the city – and the 14 km route – in the dark. Despite the lack of light, most lanterns were not lit until half past nine in the evening. “I didn’t see any bullshit,” said the world champion, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, honestly. “We had all day to do the time trial. I don’t want to be a monkey in this circus!”. In the last few hours, both the council and the organization of the race have assured that the situation was “unpredictable”, because although it was known that it would rain, they could not imagine that the city would darken so much in such a short time time
The lighting of the streetlights in Barcelona works in two ways: in some sections they have sensors that turn them on when the device detects a drop in light. Sources from the council assure that the lanterns of this type that were on the route were lit earlier. The lighting of the rest, however, depends on an annual programming system – every day they are lit at the same time depending on the time of year – which according to the City Council could not be modified in time , because the mechanism is more rigid. Given Saturday’s experience, however, the council did maneuver to get all the streetlights lit earlier on Sunday.
An unexpected situation
This Monday, the director of the Vuelta, Javier Guillén, exonerated the council from all responsibility. “If the lights had been turned on earlier, we wouldn’t have alleviated the nighttime we had either. I don’t think that responsibility can be attributed to the City Council, it was a storm that we didn’t expect,” he argued in a interview with RAC1. According to the head of the organization, if they had been certain that the weather conditions would be what they were on Saturday, they might have suspended the time trial, the last minutes of which were darkened in a way they did not foresee.
The argument of unpredictability has also been brandished in the last few hours by the Councilor for Sports, David Escudé. “With the darkness we had, or with the city lights on, we would not have solved the problem in any way,” he told Betevé.
2023-08-28 13:58:55
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