Adding insult to the injury - James Knox disqualified from Tour Down Under after crashing hard

Stage 1 of the Tour Down Under proved costly for several riders who crashed out, and James Knox was one of them. The Briton didn't abandon the race due to his injuries however, but because he has been disqualified for following a team car.

“As some of you may have seen, I was disqualified from the first stage of the Tour Down Under. I crashed hard at 55km to go and required a medical assessment from my team doctor," Knox said now in a message shared on social media. "To make sure that no bones were broken and more importantly, that I was not concussed. "After remounting, I realised my handlebar was broken, and I needed to stop again and change onto my spare bike."

Knox lost several minutes in the incident, having confirmed that he had not suffered a concussion. “The race situation at this moment was settled after the intermediate sprint, but the commissaire refused to let me stay behind the car for more than a couple of kilometres," he explained. 

"The exact reasons for this, I’m not entirely sure. My only ambition was to rejoin the back of the convoy or, at a minimum, to the other crashed riders ahead of me. Hoping to continue in a race I’ve travelled around the world to partake in and still has 4 days remaining."

Hence, Knox stayed for several kilometers behind a team car. However he was in a grey area and this time around the race commissaires did not go easy on the Soudal - Quick-Step rider, eventually disqualifying him for the extensive drafting.

“I watched from behind as other crashed riders were allowed to stay behind their cars to rejoin the race, as you would expect. I have to accept my own responsibility for the mistakes I made after this," Knox added. "On my own, with no information given about time gaps or time cuts, I took some draft from a couple of soigneur cars, who were leaving the final feed, for a few kilometres. I was seen doing so and disqualified for this.”

With the rules being unclear on how long a rider can sit behind a car, even if depending on certain circumstances, the decisions are left to the commissaires on the road. “It seems clear to me if cycling is going to take serious steps in maintaining rider welfare, commissaires should not punish riders for staying behind after a crash to be properly evaluated,” Knox argued, as did many cycling fans on social media seeing as he had been the victim of a hard crash. 

“The actions they took in the aftermath of the crash clearly demonstrated to me I would have been better off immediately remounting without undergoing a proper examination. The rules for returning to the convoy are very tricky but I feel like this was a clear-cut example that I wasn’t trying to use the cars for an advantage, nor would I have been in that situation without crashing," he concluded.