Tour de France dramatics find way to Qinghai Lake

XINING, China—The ‘unofficial’ fourth grand tour may have more in common with its WorldTour big brothers than one may expect. The 13-stage Tour of Qinghai Lake (UCI 2.HC) has built a solid reputation since its inception in 2002.

The race features 23 teams competing over 1,916km with elevations peaking at 4,120m. In fact, the race is considered to have the highest average elevation of any other bike race in the world, and has become the crowning jewel in the UCI Asia Tour calendar.

Now 15 editions later, the race continually attracts top talent, which says a lot for a race that shares one of three weeks with the biggest bike race in the world – Le Tour de France.

The gap between the two races is closing, but the similarities are not the ones sought after.

With the Tour making headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past two weeks, including Chris Froome’s (Team Sky) coming together with an overzealous observer on stage 8, as well as his and Richie Porte’s (BMC Racing) collision with a moto four days later on stage 12, the last thing Qinghai Lake wanted was to follow suit – but on the opening day it did just that.

Inside the first 5km, an official race moto viciously collided with 28-year-old New Zealand cyclist Morgan Smith (Kenyan Riders Downunder), sending the Auckland-native to the hospital and out of the race. No word on his condition, but teammate and reigning New Zealand road race champion Jason Christie told Eurosport he was still in the hospital for observation with stitches in both his knee and chin, but doing well.

After six 18.8km laps – and the race nearly complete – disaster struck again when a spectator popped out of the median (neutral ground) and walked right into the speeding peloton racing at more than 50km/h in the closing 2km. At least a third of the peloton (156 remaining riders after Smith’s forced withdrawal) hit the deck, including the spectator, who was immediately taken into custody by local law enforcement.

One rider, Italian Dall’Antonia Tiziano (Androni Spidermec), suffered a nasty head injury causing 28-year-old American Cullen Easter (Team Illuminate), who also went down, to spring into action and come to his rival’s aid.

“Some guy just came out of nowhere and everybody kind of went down,” Easter explained to Eurosport. “[Tiziano] had huge gash on the top of his head, so I grabbed a lady’s jacket to apply pressure.

“It was chaotic, but I got him stable because I’m in nursing school,” he continued. “So, I started putting pressure on the wound and just kind of kept him calm and until medics came.

“I’m happy to have been of some assistance and have all my training pay off a bit.”

No word as to Tiziano’s status other than a report from teammate Sergei Tsvetkov on Twitter.

In the end, it was Colombian Miguel Rubiano (China Continental Team of Gansu Bank), who was able to survive the chaos and claim the stage 1 bunch sprint over Italian Daniele Colli (Nippo-Vini Fantini) and Dutchman Remco Te Brake (Parkhotel-Valkenburg CT), while pre-stage favourites Marko Kump (Lampre-Merida), Marco Zanotti (Parkhotel-Valkenburg CT) and Nicolas Marini (Nippo-Vini Fantini) were all caught in the fray.

“I am very happy for this victory as it is very important for me and my team,” Rubiano told Eurosport. “But it was a very nervous finish and I just barely missed the person crossing the street from the left.

“I was very lucky, others were not.”