Is Precedent Being Set ?

All The Gears

After Mark Renshaws' expulsion from the Tour,are the Tour Commissaries setting a precedent which may come back to haunt them in future Stages ?

I say this,as nearly every Stage past and present which involves a sprint finish has some kind of 'argy bargy' and some deliberate/non deliberate blocking of other riders.
And so I think we may see more teams and riders lodging complaints about their opponents tactics,especially if as was said in this article in the Guardian,they may decide to also punish the Team Leaders for the misdemeanors of their team mates.This could then have a huge bearing on the overall race.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/ju ... rance-2010

Teach

I think the idea of punishing the team leader would be dangerous/unfair. Dangerous because if you were to punish Shleck because one of his team members misbehaved it would have huge impact on the overall result. If you take that line with some of the other teams that aren't going to win anything, what damage does it really do to them, but it has to happen across the board!
I think it is unfair because I can't think of any other sport where this happens. In motor racing either the driver who committed the offence or the team lose constructor points but not team mates. Football, rugby etc a man is sent off and the team are disadvantaged but you don't fine their star player because of someone else's behaviour. I do hope a knee jerk reaction is made that hinders the sport.

rick_chasey

http://www.cervelo.com/en_us/news-blog/ ... tions/775/

Teach

Fair comment

Pretre

Rick Chasey wrote:

http://www.cervelo.com/en_us/news-blog/rider-blogs/article/sprint-penalties-disqualifications/775/

Nice to see a balanced article - absolutely correct in saying that the standard penalty would have meant nothing to Renshaw or HTC.

shakey88

My god,they really hate Cavendish winning don't they!

deejay

Teach wrote:

Fair comment

How about Renshaw having a quick look over left shoulder and thinking that Dean is coming to have another assault on him.

Before Dean arrived Renshaw was going about normal business with his eyes looking front with his only worry is that cavendish is there
Then a rider comes alongside from behind to lean on him towards the barriers with the sole object of roughing him up.
He hasn't got eyes at the back and at a quick glance one garmin is like another and a garmin has just tried to knock him off.
Therefore he thinks the coward is creeping back again to stab him in the back.
The whole time when Dean arrived, Renshaw was on the Defence and trying to survive.
So the initial assault came from Dean and the victim is not allowed to defend and gets punished.
come on you back street lawers is that justice.

Fair comment my bum.

That UCI/ASO jury were at fault in making a decision so quickly and having such a penalty that there is no return but the egg remains on their faces.
HTC have said Bucket.

Farrar could well have retired with injury but the incident embarrassment helped his decision. IMO

Limburger

Its just like in football, you can get away with a bit of leaning on the opposition - maybe you will get a warning - at worst a yellow.

Now Renshaw nutted Dean in the cycling equivalent of the penalty box. Instant red. Fair dos'. I would hope the chump who starts thrashing about when I am riding at >55kph gets booted off. No knee jerk reaction or dangerous precedent. It would be dangerous if they didn't boot him out, now all the other lead out men know that if you try to put a nut on someone or equivalent its not going down well instead of trying to get away with it.

dougzz

It happens in all walks of life. The initial incident is only properly examined if the retaliation is obvious. If Renshaw had done nothing Dean's actions would have gone unnoticed and unpunished. As it was they went unpunished, which was unfair given the punishment for Renshaw.

ascurrell

The original question was has the tour set a precedent, personally I say no as they seem to do what ever they want, yeh it's their tour but there doesn't seem any consistancy unless it concerns a Brit or an American rider or Team.

I am not saying that their decision here was right or wrong but as originally suggested [a precedent] they would find themselves with a mountain specialist winning the green jersey. Let's face it there is loads of dangerous stuff going on in the sprints and loads would get kicked off. Admittadly Renshaw's actions were a a little bit blatant and because it was around Cavendish for all to see.

Personally I believe Cav's chances of the green jersey last year was very harshly taken away from him last year when he was adjudged to have impeded Hushovd.

I'm sure next time something happens the wind will be blowing in a different direction and they will see it differently.
This forum is the first I have read about the incident, out of interest did Julian Dean object afterwards as at the time he didn't seem bothered, maybe if they had had a few fisticuffs afterwards maybe it would have just got fined like another couple of riders after a sprint.

Don't get me wrong what Renshaw did was dangerous because if Dean had have gone down there would have been a massive crash and we've all seen how vulverable the cyclists are to injury [collar bones etc] and how the domino effect can cause riders way back to suffer as well. However I do think different riders / nationalities get contradictive punishments.
We can't judge how the French would get punished because they are way down the field.
I would just like to add I ma not anti french as my wife comes from that wonderful country.
Regards, Scurry

AidanR

deejay wrote:

Teach wrote:

Fair comment

How about Renshaw having a quick look over left shoulder and thinking that Dean is coming to have another assault on him.

Before Dean arrived Renshaw was going about normal business with his eyes looking front with his only worry is that cavendish is there
Then a rider comes alongside from behind to lean on him towards the barriers with the sole object of roughing him up.
He hasn't got eyes at the back and at a quick glance one garmin is like another and a garmin has just tried to knock him off.
Therefore he thinks the coward is creeping back again to stab him in the back.
The whole time when Dean arrived, Renshaw was on the Defence and trying to survive.
So the initial assault came from Dean and the victim is not allowed to defend and gets punished.
come on you back street lawers is that justice.

Fair comment my bum.

That UCI/ASO jury were at fault in making a decision so quickly and having such a penalty that there is no return but the egg remains on their faces.
HTC have said Bucket.

Farrar could well have retired with injury but the incident embarrassment helped his decision. IMO

You've got to be kidding. So you say that Renshaw was in the right based on your belief that he might have mistaken Farrar for Dean? I personally don't think there's much to the headbutting as I believe it's less an assault and more a warding off, however bad it looks on camera. But deliberately cutting off Farrar was not on, even if Renshaw did mistake him for Dean. And why would it have been Dean? He's the leadout man. He had fallen behind Renshaw at that point, and then Cav goes. There's no way Dean would have kicked again at that point to come past Renshaw - it was only ever going to be Farrar. And to suggest that Farrar quit because he felt ashamed that he was blocked?! What planet are you living on?

I will say, though, that I don't think Dean is blameless here, and I agree that race control made their decision far too early - they only saw the replay once before kicking Renshaw out.

Teach

Fair comment

I originally responded to the original post with my thoughts and Rick Chasey responded with a different link.
I replied fair comment. Not meaning I necessarily agreed with it, but another point of view.
We can debate this all day long and have been doing so. As Aidan R said I think a decision was made too quickly.

Whilst we all sit here like the great judges I wouldn't want to be a tour commissaire.