Race Doctor's Car Expelled From Itzulia After Causing Landa Crash — "We Haven't Received a Single Apology" Fumes Soudal-QuickStep CEO
UCI commissaires have expelled the driver of the Itzulia Basque Country race doctor's car from the event after determining that the vehicle was directly responsible for Mikel Landa's heavy stage 2 crash on the descent of San Miguel de Aralar. The driver has been fined 500 Swiss Francs and the car removed from the convoy for the remainder of the race — a rare and damning sanction against an official vehicle in a WorldTour stage race.
The incident, which had initially been reported as a routine descent crash, has taken on a very different complexion following the release of onboard footage and driver testimony on Wednesday morning. The race doctor's car had attempted to overtake Landa on a narrow and fast section of the first-category descent, misjudging the line and the Basque climber's trajectory. Contact was made, Landa went down heavily, and the Soudal-QuickStep leader was forced to pick himself up and ride more than thirteen minutes down on stage winner Paul Seixas.
Soudal-QuickStep CEO Jurgen Foré is furious. Speaking to reporters at the team hotel in Vitoria on Wednesday afternoon, the Belgian executive did not attempt to disguise his anger. "The doctor's car simply knocked Mikel Landa off his bike on a narrow and fast descent," Foré said. "And we haven't received a single apology. Not from the driver, not from the race organisation, not from the UCI. In a week where everyone is talking about rider safety and the investment this sport is making in it, a professional cyclist is knocked off his bike by a vehicle that is supposed to be there to protect him. Mikel is in pain tonight because of that car. That is not acceptable."
The commissaires' report, which Cycling Lookout has reviewed, confirms that the driver attempted the overtake at a point where the road was "manifestly insufficient" for a safe passage, and that no emergency justified the manoeuvre. The decision to expel the vehicle came within hours of stage 3's finish in Basauri, where Paul Seixas won his third stage of the week. The 500 CHF fine is the maximum available to the commissaires under the UCI regulation governing conduct of vehicles in the race convoy.
Landa himself did not start stage 3, his team confirming in a medical bulletin that scans at doctor Mikel Sánchez's Vitoria clinic had ruled out fractures but revealed widespread contusions and deep road rash on the 36-year-old's left side. The Giro d'Italia begins in exactly one month with a Grande Partenza in Bulgaria, and Landa had been building his entire spring around it. Soudal-QuickStep's sporting director at the race, Tom Steels, admitted that the Giro "is not off the table, but it is not as certain as it was on Monday morning."
The affair revives a deeply uncomfortable conversation the sport has had at regular intervals over the past decade. Race vehicle incidents — from Johnny Hoogerland's barbed-wire nightmare at the 2011 Tour de France to Juan Antonio Flecha's near-identical experience on the same day — have repeatedly shown how quickly a misjudged overtake can end a season or maim a rider. The UCI and race organisers have introduced numerous reforms since, but the pattern of convoy vehicles making risky decisions at the worst possible moments has never been eliminated.
For Foré, the infuriating detail is the silence. "An apology would have changed everything," he said. "People make mistakes. A driver misjudged a corner. Fine. But nobody has picked up the phone. Nobody has knocked on our team bus door. The driver has been removed from the race, which is correct, but it does not feel like anyone involved in this incident considers what they have done to be a serious moment." Soudal-QuickStep have formally requested a meeting with race organisers and the UCI for Thursday morning ahead of the queen stage around Galdakao.
The Landa incident also inevitably adds another difficult chapter to a bruising spring for the peloton. Tom Pidcock is still battling knee ligament damage from the Volta a Catalunya, Marlen Reusser is out for two months with a fractured vertebra sustained at the Tour of Flanders, and Elisa Longo Borghini is still working her way back from the same crash. The Landa-doctor-car incident will now form a central exhibit in the wider debate about rider safety that the CPA and the rider union have been pushing hard across the 2026 season — a debate that had, until now, been focused primarily on race route design and the behaviour of riders themselves, rather than on the people who share the road with them.