Chris Froome's absence from the signing ceremony for stage 15 of the Vuelta a España has put him within negative points of the UCI rider rankings.

The two-time Vuelta winner was one of three Ineos Grenadiers who did not register for Thursday's 230km stage, along with Richard Calapaz and Andrei Amador, who are currently second overall.

Due to the COVID-19 measure, Vuelta organizers eliminated the traditional physical sign-on process in favor of a contactless facial recognition system.

Froome, Calapaz, and Amador did not make the podium and were each fined 500 Swiss francs and stripped of 15 UCI points, according to UCI regulations. Sport director Gabriel Rasch was also fined 500 Swiss francs.

Calapaz is currently 89th in the UCI World Ranking and Amador is 1904th in the same ranking, but Froome will be out of the ranking and will not be subject to a point deduction. A podium penalty would have relegated him to below zero.

The ranking is a 52-week rolling system, with points from the previous 12 months counted; after suffering a career-threatening injury in June 2019, Froome only returned to racing this past February and has since been on the road back to full fitness.

As a result, his results so far this season are far from their peak, and he has yet to score a single point.

Points vary depending on his position in each race, but Froome's best finish this year was 30th in stage 3 of the Tour de Ain.

Froome came to the Vuelta after missing out on the Tour de France, but with Carapaz in contention for the red jersey, the result was not on Froome's mind; the seven-time Grand Tour winner is moving this race to the Israeli start-up nation. He is treating the race as building blocks for the upcoming season, when he will move to the Israeli start-up state.

"I'm actually really enjoying this Vuelta a España. It's a completely different race than any Grand Tour I've ever done in terms of my own expectations and GC. You go into the stage, you do your job, and then when you're done, you get out of your seat.

"I've gradually gotten stronger as the race has gone on and I feel like I've contributed more in the last few days than I did earlier in the race. My legs are coming back slowly, step by step, which is a good sign. I still have a long way to go to get back to the level I was at before, but I'm making progress step by step and I'm really happy with the progress I've made so far.

"One thing I've felt has been missing all season is top-end racing. Of course, last year I missed about six months due to injury and even more due to the COVID thing. So I knew that if I could run the majority of these races on my own legs, I would feel more like myself. That's exactly what I found, and that's a real positive for me."

The judging report for stage 15 of the Vuelta a España also included a CHF 500 fine against Bruno Almirail (Groupama-FDJ) for "obstructing another rider to delay his run" and penalties in all race classes.

Movistar director Jose Luis Arrieta was fined for "failure to respect the commissaire's instructions" and Michael Stohler of Team Sunweb was fined for "inappropriate behavior in public."

The Vuelta continues on Friday with another intermediate mountain stage before a summit finish in La Covatilla on Saturday and a final ride to Madrid on Sunday.