Eduard Prades' saddle came loose as he raised his arms aloft in celebration while crossing the finish line of the first stage at the Tour of Hellas, causing his bike to collapse underneath him as he was sent sprawling to the ground.
To add insult to injury, the Caja Rural-Seguros RGA rider had actually finished in second place at the UCI 2.1-ranked stage race in Greece, not realising Aaron Gate (Bolton Equities-Black Spoke) had crossed the line a full 1-46 earlier.
A small group sprinted to the line at the end of the 190.1km stage from Heraklion to Chania on the island of Crete, with Prades leading the pack. Unaware of Gate already finishing, Prades celebrated after believing he had achieved first place. Failing to mention the mechanical failure which saw him crash, the Spaniard explained why he had mistakenly raised his arms in a team press release.
"Both Trek and we have been attacking for much of the climb and in the end Jon [Barrenetxea] gave me a hand on the descent to catch the breakaway group," Prades explained. "We caught them but the truth is that we didn't have much information and the way the race was going I thought there was no one left in front, that's why in the end I raised my arms."
Regardless, the 34-year-old did manage to see the funny side of his misdemeanours on Wednesday. Taking to Instagram, Prades recognised that while he isn't able to dedicate the race victory to his newborn son, Ilan, anymore, at least he has an interesting photo to show him instead.
“At first I thought I had dedicated my victory to Ilan, but I couldn't," Prades said. “The last I heard was that the difference at 20km from the finish was two minutes. We climbed quickly after that and then I threw myself into the descent. Then we also overtook a few escapees.
“When I looked at the TV bikes, the support cars and the way our group was heading, I had the feeling that we were riding for the win. I thought that the leading group had already been caught, but it turned out that I had misjudged that.
“At least I have a photo that I really wanted for my son.”
