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El Pais: Real Madrid Star James Rodriguez Clocked Doing 200km Per Hour On Highway [Video]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 23:25 PST, Jan 2, 2016

Colombian-born Real Madrid star James Rodriguez was pursued by an unmarked police car traveling at 200km/hour on the M-40 highway on his way to training.

It was the Madrid sports daily, AS, that reported the story first, displaying photos of James Rodriguez arriving at the Valdebebas training ground, north of Spain’s capital, on Friday. Rodriguez was being pursued by an unmarked car sporting a blue flashing light as well as a blaring siren. There were calls of “Pull over! Pull over to the right!” by the police, but Rodriguez still managed to enter the training grounds.

A video, included below shows the speeding car arriving at the training grounds after being pursued at 200km per hour (around 125mph) on the M-40 motorway, and the police car being stopped by security at the entrance.

James Rodriguez’ face is clearly shown in the video, looking a trifle nervous.

Now, it seems Rodriguez is likely to face a hefty fine for speeding and could also face a driving ban of up to one year. The car belonging to James Rodriguez was reportedly confiscated at the scene and is quoted by AS as being a top of the line Audi.

According to a report by the Spanish language news service El Pais, the Real Madrid star had several inventive excuses for speeding down the highway at 200km per hour, including the fact that he was apparently late for training and that he thought he might be suffering a hijacking.

Tweet translation: “I was afraid that it was a trick to kidnap me,” James justifies his flight from police at high speed.

When asked about the unmarked police car, which was chasing him at speed with a blue flashing light and a siren blaring, Rodriguez said he didn’t see the police car at first and the reason he couldn’t hear the siren was because his music was playing too loud inside the car.

James Rodriguez then referred to his home country of Colombia, saying that when he did finally notice the unmarked car speeding after him, he didn’t want to stop. He feared that — as is common in his home country with owners of expensive cars — he might be the victim of a car hijacking.

On the police’s side of the story, El Pais notes the officers driving the unmarked car believed they were pursuing a stolen vehicle and this is why they initially started following Rodriguez’ car.

It was only when the vehicle turned off towards Valdebebas that the officers realized it was James Rodriguez sitting behind the wheel. El Pais reported the police attempted to stop the vehicle twice, without success, and the chase continued all the way to the entrance of the Real Madrid training grounds.

When the speeding vehicle was finally stopped at the training grounds at around 5:30 p.m., Rodriguez reportedly apologized to the police officers, explaining his story about fearing he was the victim of a car hijacking and pointing to the fact the officers were driving an unmarked vehicle at the time.

As reported by El Pais, James Rodriguez also tried to claim he wasn’t driving at 200km per hour and reportedly said there is no radar speed detector onsite to prove he was driving that fast. However, the police naturally knew the speed they had to reach in order to catch up with the Real Madrid striker.

According to El Pais, officials at Real Madrid were not available for comment on the incident.

The speed limit for cars on motorways and highways in Spain is 120km per hour.

[Photo by Zhong Zhi/Getty Images]

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