If yesterday’s stage was considered the Queen stage, we might as well call today the King stage of the 2015 Tour of the Basque Country. With 8 climbs and a very steep uphill finish, with percentages up to 17%, the 5th stage of this Vuelta al País Vasco promised once again for a very hard race. And so it turned out to be!

Julián Arredondo and Laurent Didier went in a big breakaway with over 30 riders, which made it a lot easier for the Trek riders in the peloton, where Sky and Katusha worked hard to close the gap.

Unfortunately, in the chasing of that breakaway Bauke Mollema and Fränk Schleck were involved in a nasty crash.

“In one of the descents, we were going down at 60km an hour, when the rider in front of me suddenly braked”, Mollema explained. “I was really close and I didn’t expect him to hit the brakes because the road was totally straight. I touched his wheel and the next thing I know, I’m on the ground. Unfortunately I took Fränk with me also, but I’m very happy to see he seems okay.”

Schleck confirmed : “When Bauke fell, sadly I could not avoid him and fell over him. I’m okay but I must say I have felt better before.”

Bob Jungels, who demonstrated his growing form all week, stopped immediately and waited for Mollema to bring him back to the peloton.

“We have been working well all week and losing time because of a crash is just such a pity. We were all together: Bauke, Haimar, me and Fränk in my wheel. Honestly, I don’t know how Haimar and I managed to escape from it.”

“We came back quite fast and Fabio [Felline] and Haimar [Zubeldia] were waiting for us at the back of the bunch. But we had lost a lot of energy to come back and then we almost immediately went straight into that wall (Alto de Aia). I know how it feels after that kind of crash. You just don’t feel comfortable on the bike. It’s really a pity we lost time today but you know, we’ll take our revenge in the classics!”

Mollema, very disillusioned, explained: “It’s never nice to crash of course, but hey that’s cycling. Right now I’m really disappointed because I was still fighting for the first positions in the GC and I had a really good feeling today also. And then you lose it because of a stupid crash!

“Afterwards  I spent a lot of energy to come back first and yeah, after a crash like this, you’re just not the same anymore.”

Mollema will not start in the final stage tomorrow, with a time trial going over the exact last 18km of today’s stage: “Now, first of all I have to recover well for the classics next week. We do not want to take any risks for that, so I will concentrate on a –hopefully- speedy recovery!”.