Alakagom wrote:
I think this is non-issue personally, but if Froome did that the haters would be full in force
Well there have been about 20 pages of Froome hating in this thread alone because he got knocked off his bike by a motorbike. I think that proves the point perfectly
I think, having read through this thread, that your assertion is incorrect: the vast majority of hate in this thread is directed firstly towards the ASO, for implementing insufficient safety measures, secondly towards the UCI, for an extremely dubious time gap readjustment/neutralisation. Froome has benefited more than most from the time gap fiasco and there appears to be a certain two-way link there (see Mollema's tweet for the insinuation of something along those lines), and his decision to start running up the mountain without his bike is somewhat questionable: although I understand the panic of the moment, the Tour de France is a bicycle race, not a running race; surely trying to contravene this principle is against the spirit of the rules, if not the rules themselves? Thus Froome is logically perceived as doing more wrong than the other riders, even if the fault of the chaos lies with the ASO, and the fault of the resultant chaos from the initial chaos lies with the UCI, if that makes sense
None of it makes sense
At least it's over now and we can all move on with the race
One thought I've just had. Don't all of the riders have transmitters in their bikes these days to record their times accurately? Why can't they use those to record the time gaps as at the actual crash time? Would that be a fair way of doing it?
Also people forget that the race was shortened, the same day, 10 km due to high winds at Mont Ventoux. This explains why the safety barriers were not in place where occured the crash.
Therefore it is a combination of several factors:
1) Shortened race on the same day, missing some security barriers before the end,
2) Large crowds of spectators, too close to the riders,
3) Low safety margins between motorbikes and riders,
4) Bad luck with the other motorbike that broke Froome's bike.
Stromeon wrote:
Froome has benefited more than most from the time gap fiasco and there appears to be a certain two-way link there (see Mollema's tweet for the insinuation of something along those lines), and his decision to start running up the mountain without his bike is somewhat questionable: although I understand the panic of the moment, the Tour de France is a bicycle race, not a running race; surely trying to contravene this principle is against the spirit of the rules, if not the rules themselves? Thus Froome is logically perceived as doing more wrong than the other riders, even if the fault of the chaos lies with the ASO, and the fault of the resultant chaos from the initial chaos lies with the UCI, if that makes sense
Just wanted to pick you up on a couple of your points.
Firstly, Froome hasn't benefitted here. He has in fact lot a few seconds extra advantage that he would have had over some riders without the crash, so he is worse off as a result.
Secondly, none of the riders have done anything wrong here (apart from maybe Quintana by holding onto the motorbike, and even that is understandable when you consider that nobody knows what the commissaires are going to do with the situation). It would be wrong to try and gain an unfair advantage over other riders, but the most any rider did here is try to reduce the unfair disadvantage they themselves had suffered as a result of idiotic fans.
