Vuelta skelter: Dude, where’s my bike?

The longest stage of the Vuelta a Espana was hardly the most riveting of affairs, but a punchy finish and a bizarre episode 33km from the finish provided amble morsels to chew over once the Spanish dust had settled over evergreen Alejandro Valverde’s latest signature win.

But we’ll start today’s Vuelta Skelter not with the Spanish veteran but with that incident, which saw one Cannondale-Garmin rider almost lose his bike…

That crash involving numerous riders from Cannondale-Garmin and BMC coming out of a narrow exit on a roundabout was followed by an odd, almost surreal scene when a tubby topless man with a cigarette dangling from his lips mounted Ben King’s bike before jovially handing over the steed once he was called to heel.

The brazen nature with which the man went about his actions made it look as if he were perhaps lending King a helping hand. Indeed, were it not for the Astana-style shorts, lack of t-shirt and cigarette in mouth, viewers would perhaps have believed they were watching a Cannondale-Garmin mechanic trying to sort out a problem with King’s bike.

Judge for yourself in the video below…

Of course, not everyone was so generous in their conclusions, with many flagging up what could have been a botched (and surely drunken?) attempt to steal a professional racer’s bike in front of a global audience of millions.

If King’s Cannondale wasn’t stolen in the end, then the machine provided by the other half of his co-sponsors apparently was…

Although there’s always the slim chance that the Garmin simply fell off when King went over the handlebars after overcooking the bend. Luckily for King he had a load of bidons stuffed down his jersey to act as a nice cushion.

Give him an uphill sprint in Spain (or in the Ardennes) and nine times out of ten he’ll probably win.

Now 35, veteran Valverde showed just why he is favourite to finish top of the WorldTour rankings for a second successive year, with a trademark dig to deny Peter Sagan a second successive win in Spain after a series of ramps in the last four kilometres.

Valverde’s win was the ninth in a sequence stretching back to 2003 – something which probably makes us fans feel even older than the Green Bullet himself.

His triumph also meant that the hot Alejandro Valverde topic for the day on Twitter was not the confusion surrounding his birthday (which, unlike his unheralded Costa Rican namesake, is actually in late April).

As many suggested, it would be a bit remiss to pan Peter for missing out on the win – especially after the Slovakian sensation pretty much did everything right, and against the odds given the rough terrain.

But Valverde’s win nevertheless consigned Sagan to his least-favourite but most-frequented rung on the podium – the second highest tier.

So it's back to being bridesmaid for Peter ‘Poulidor’ Sagavermaet...

The day’s most combative rider was Trek’s Basque veteran Irizar, who instigated the day’s six-man break before being the last of two men standing alongside fellow 35-year-old Jimmy Engoulvent of Europcar.

And a look back at the pre-stage images proved, perhaps, that Irizar and Valverde had written the script well in advance…

Interestingly, the two veterans were not the only Spaniards chewing the fat beside the fountain, with Joaquim Rodriguez and a Caja Rural rider getting in on the act.

And who’s that behind J-Rod with his own fishing rod?

With Team Sky setting a tempo on the front of the pack near the finish, Salvatore Puccio was spotted at the back of the peloton. And he clearly struggled to relocate his team-mates after the hectic finale, too.

Thomas’s jibe surely can’t be a joke at Puccio’s loss of four minutes over the finish line – for the Welshman himself came home another minute or so back.

Perhaps they were simply playing a game of, ahem, ride and seek...

That is, according to one rather non-plussed rider...

Perhaps the race organisers' Garmin suffered a similar fate to that of Martin's team-mate Ben King?