Latest comments
- Congratulations to Egan Bernal. It's great to see him winning once again.
- The whole point of policing is to make sure safety is guaranteed. Like you discovered, this is rarely the case everywhere and by and large little happens because MOST people have basic sense and respect. What I cannot accept is theat police and organisers are there in positions of professionals and yet their behaviour/decisions and concern is often not professional at all. When I hear the same car was already stopped twice, all I can say is 1. some police obviously don’t know how to obtain respect or take decisions anymore, 2. the way of blocking intersections has not been discussed properly. As so often, there is no space (and no REAL interest here probably) to lay out how to man crossings properly but if anyone asks, I’d be happy to explain some basics which I’ve picked up along the way, yes I have fone this, volunteered, helped race organisers and seen it all, it’s just that I refuse to repeat a badly done job which is generally why people ask me back and those events (cycling, running, triathlon, company reward or incentive days, kids event, fund raisers, charities, concerts, raves, wow, I’d forgotten so much from focusing on the present) improved with time which doesn’t seem to be the case with many cycling events these days.
- Wow, look at the crowds fighting for a good view at the finish.
- It's always fantastic to see the hard workers get their chance to go for the glory. Chapeau to Louis Vervaeke on a well earned win.
- Quote," We find ourselves in a competition where the car that was incriminated on Thursday had been stopped twice by the police. It nevertheless took off again in the wrong direction," he reveals."
- shocking a french guy defending a french race. this is inexcusable. 2 days in a row
- I will admit to nearly pulling onto the road at the top of the Tourmalet when a Espoires race was coming through a number of years ago, the rolling road block wasn't exactly policed that well.
I will plead very ignorant Scotsman, I was so dumbfounded at myself at what I'd very nearly done, I didn't think to jump out the car and take pictures!!
I guess my message is that unless its very well policed or you have inate knowledge of what's happening it would be quite easy to pull onto a road inadvertently. However where you know a race is in progress there is absolutely no excuse to venture on the roads.
- Far more interesting, did he also get punished?
- This is true, but, having ben on both sides, there arr situations where as a rider you genuinely can’t hear much behind you for all the white noise (wind, engine, tires, etc.) and that’s without even having earphones. But seriously, this gendarmes explanation sound like a cheap cop (yes, pun intended) out. You cannot possibly expect any motorised gendarme, no matter how skilled, to manage road junctions up ahead if they are also falling behind, that totally unserious. If the gendarmes are to control traffic, there needs to be one staying up front at ALL (absolute bare minimum, even 2 is dodgy, 3 relaying would be considered workable unless of course there are unmanned crossings every few hundred meters.
Can you imagine they would move around like that with no plan when escorting heads of state or sensitive prisoners, NEVER happens, for good reason, you cannot prepare for what’s up ahead that way.
Heck, in the TdF TTs EVERY rider is accompanied by at least one gendarme.
- That is simply not acceptable. I'm glad these teams left the race. BTW, that's how these things are supposed to be decided, by the riders and teams, not by a massive international cycling body that thinks its job is to control-freak at everything everywhere. And, it's quite obvious, the UCI is utterly failing to do its job, or these incidents wouldn't be happening!