Posted on 06/26/2021 9:24:09 PM PDT by 11th_VA
Pandemonium broke out in the cycling roads of France on Saturday when a massive crash broke out in Stage 1 of the Tour de France. A spectator stretched out a little too far onto the course with their sign and tripped up cyclist Tony Martin, causing a mass of bikes and bodies to pile up as a result.
In addition to Martin, the whole Jumbo Visma team went down along with dozens and dozens of others. The fan that caused the crash was holding a sign that read 'Allez Opi-Omi!' written on it in black marker, which is a hello message to their grandparents.
The Tour's official Twitter account released a public service announcement shortly after the incident.
We're glad to have the public on the side of the road on the #TDF2021.
But for the Tour to be a success, respect the safety of the riders!
Don't risk everything for a photo or to get on television!
As for what happened to the spectator, well, here's what Ouest-France reported. The following is translated from French to English.
Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, revealed to us this Saturday evening that ASO, the organizer of the race, had filed a complaint against this spectator. But just after the incident, the latter, of foreign nationality, probably German, took to the skies. For now, he remains untraceable.
A daring escape for an absolutely boneheaded crime.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbssports.com ...
finally, some excitement in the race! j/k
That is one of the issues when you are riding in peloton... freak things happen and there is nothing that you can do. I went down several times when people in front of me took a spill and I ran over the top of them. At one of the first training races of the year I hit someone’s wheel and went down and almost the entire team that I had just joined ran over the top of me. Luckily the only one who had more than a few scrapes and bruises was me
One of the bikes frame completely broke apart - went down hard
When I was racing the bikes were still made of steel, so they usually bent and didn’t break into pieces.
Yep, it’s pretty hairy being in the middle of a pelaton. Never wiped out in one, but it’s a white knuckle intensely alive experience.
Do the Peloton exercise machines accurately recreate the white knuckle intensely alive experience?
Srsly? Your utterly banal question answers itself.
These people spend literally YEARS of their lives preparing for the absolutely ultimate race of their lives, and you are comparing it to a populist wanna-be exercise tool.
Screw road bikes
Mountain bikes ! Giant rims. Tires. Wheels. Shocks. Tough !!
Not Pussy willow little girl bikes
My serious racing career ended almost 40 years ago, but I still have a lot of scars from that time period. I was young and never thought that much about it at the time... other than I preferred to be toward the front. Luckily I didn't take up hang gliding until I was almost 30 and had a little better sense of my own mortality.
I was in a lot of races where a lot of people went down. One year we had a crash during the final sprint at the regional championships. People were seriously injured, there was a line of ambulances and we must have put half the county's hospitals on divert.
One year on the RAGBRAI me and some guys in the group I was with decided to try for a four-hour century. Got halfway through when the lead guy went down and we all followed. My left knee was never the same.
.
Drafting helps a LOT.
You could never do it alone.
It might have been five hours we were trying for. I don’t remember for sure. That was pretty much the end of my drafting career.
Been there. The peloton is dangerous enough with out fan interference.
It’s loud. It’s shoulder to shoulder. It’s crowded. There are FUs flying as riders want back in the draft they worked themselves out of.
In a word, the peloton is vicious.
Then you have the downhill flights.
Cycling is tough and dangerous. unlike soccer.
The difference between actually being hurt Vs. pretending to be hurt.
Man, woman, or cluster?
One would think that in all that time spent preparing, they would have learned to look ahead for possible obstacles. ;)
The spectator didn't jut their sign out at the last minute. The rider wasn't paying attention to where he was going and ran into the sign/spectator's arm. (See: 2021 Tour de France Stage 1 Crash)
They crashed again at 6.8mi of Stage 1, except there was no spectators involved. (See: Second massive crash leads to pileup in Stage 1 of the 2021 Tour de France)
All the injuries were classified as “covid related” with a secondary cause of “global warming”.
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