Both looked spent to me at the line. Sepp and Mateo looked like they were as well.
OK, Campanaerts. This is going to be lengthy, as you need to understand who does what in the peloton in terms of supporting the riders. This is from the Grand Tour perspective.
When the field is all together, the peloton has neutral support ahead of the field, and also behind. Usually it's four cars total, but it could be more or less. They have generic neutral bikes on the roof as well as wheels and mechanics inside. The bikes on the roof are arranged large on the inside, small on the outside, and the groups are separated by pedal type. The mechanic has a list posted on the dash with a diagram of what's above him, and the numbers of the riders associated with each bike. Team cars have a similar setup, but it's specific to their riders. Riders have a spare bike set up for them on the roof, plus the wheels and mechanics. However, the team is larger than the number of bikes on the roof of one vehicle, and some riders are more important than others. Thus, a rider needing service may have one spare bike on a specific team car, and nowhere else.
So why can't the team car with Campanaerts bike just blast up the opposite lane and get up to him and fix it? Because that's not how it works. The movement of motor vehicles is controlled by a race official called the regulator. They are on a motorcycle, and wear a red jumpsuit with REGULATOR on the back. Nothing moves without the regulator's approval, except for media. Their job is to know the gaps between riders, and only allow the appropriate support vehicles in the gap. The regulator has no idea where the spare bike for any rider is unless he/she is told by a team manager. They make the request for vehicle movement from the regulator over the radio.
In Grand Tour support vehicles, there are at least four radio channels being used simultaneously:
Radio Tour - the race channel that's constantly broadcasting the race situation to the media. Who is up the road, what the gaps are, etc.
Commissaire - this is the race official's channel
Race Radio - this is the race director's channel
Medical - this channel is reserved for medical personnel
All four of these channels can be broadcasting at the same time, all talking at the same time. It's radio chaos, but you get used to it.
Back to the race situation. There was a very large breakaway up the road, maybe 25-30 riders? I didn't count, but it wasn't a half dozen. The gap was somewhere in the 2 minute range. If that meant that 15 or more team cars were needed to support every rider in the break, that's an awful lot of vehicles in front of the field. Getting them into the gap isn't that difficult, but getting them out before a descent can be very difficult, but it's critical for safety. Only motorcycles are allowed at that point, and the fewer, the better. We've all seen riders getting clipped by motorcycles during descents. So, the regulator has to make calculated decisions based on what he knows at the moment.
My take is that the regulator did not want 15+ team cars in a 2 minute gap at that point in the race. Once Campanaerts fell off the back of the break on his neutral bike, he could send up the appropriate team car with his spare. I didn't see if there were team cars behind the break at that point. But where was the team car that had his spare bike? I saw Campanaerts talking to the regulator on the descent, so who knows what was said. At that point, he wasn't going to get back into the break. Where was his primary bike? On the roof of one of the neutral support cars. A total cluster.
This is what should have happened. The team car with Campanaerts' spare bike, and the neutral vehicle with his primary bike, should have requested to run ahead of the break by 2 miles or so and pull over. One mechanic gets the spare off the roof and gives it the once over, and the other gets the primary bike off of the neutral car and fixes it. At 30mph, 2 miles is 4 minutes. That should be time enough to fix the primary, with the spare as a backup. When Campanearts reaches the team car, they do a cyclocross bike swap and the team car paces him for the first few hundred meters to get him up to speed, and then drops back to avoid a penalty.
I don't know what exactly went wrong, or who was primarily at fault. It seems like the whole thing could have been avoided. Hopefully now you understand the organized chaos that is going on inside the peloton, and how one little mistake can be disaster.
