2015 Giro Stage 6 **Spoilers**

Macaloon

Daniele Colli reporting for duty.

‏@PaddyPowerItaly
Vogliate recapitare al tifoso che ha fatto cadere @DanieleColli questo suo messaggio di affetto!

frenchfighter

Haha good one! Suck on that you camera totting tool.

RonB

No prob, this is the internet. Everyone is perfectly entitled to be a leading expert in all things

DeVlaeminck

OnYourRight wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I can see how a novice fan can easily get caught out by a rider sprinting up the barriers so in that sense I have some sympathy for the photographer but even so his camera was effectively on the course.

While true, the camera was one of hundreds of other things including body parts protruding beyond the barriers. The barriers keep spectators separated from racers, but they are not centimetre-perfect dividing lines you can bet your life on. They are thick, fuzzy lines with a zone of no-man’s land – or everyone’s land – in the middle. The barriers themselves aren’t even straight, either. The closer you get to them, the greater the risk you hit something.

Yes fans intrude over the barriers but if they do so and hit a rider they are the ones at fault not the rider, you can say the rider is placing themself at greater risk but that doesn't mean they share the blame. If I walk about in the roughest part of London at night with a laptop under my arm I may be putting myself at risk but I don't share the blame 50:50 if I get robbed.

adr82

DeVlaeminck wrote:

OnYourRight wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I can see how a novice fan can easily get caught out by a rider sprinting up the barriers so in that sense I have some sympathy for the photographer but even so his camera was effectively on the course.

While true, the camera was one of hundreds of other things including body parts protruding beyond the barriers. The barriers keep spectators separated from racers, but they are not centimetre-perfect dividing lines you can bet your life on. They are thick, fuzzy lines with a zone of no-man’s land – or everyone’s land – in the middle. The barriers themselves aren’t even straight, either. The closer you get to them, the greater the risk you hit something.

Yes fans intrude over the barriers but if they do so and hit a rider they are the ones at fault not the rider, you can say the rider is placing themself at greater risk but that doesn't mean they share the blame. If I walk about in the roughest part of London at night with a laptop under my arm I may be putting myself at risk but I don't share the blame 50:50 if I get robbed.

Exactly. The barriers are supposed to be there so the riders are able to use the whole road without worrying about fans getting in the way. If you stick part of your body or some other object over them you'd better be extremely careful given the speeds involved.

philwint

DeVlaeminck wrote:

OnYourRight wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

I can see how a novice fan can easily get caught out by a rider sprinting up the barriers so in that sense I have some sympathy for the photographer but even so his camera was effectively on the course.

While true, the camera was one of hundreds of other things including body parts protruding beyond the barriers. The barriers keep spectators separated from racers, but they are not centimetre-perfect dividing lines you can bet your life on. They are thick, fuzzy lines with a zone of no-man’s land – or everyone’s land – in the middle. The barriers themselves aren’t even straight, either. The closer you get to them, the greater the risk you hit something.

Yes fans intrude over the barriers but if they do so and hit a rider they are the ones at fault not the rider, you can say the rider is placing themself at greater risk but that doesn't mean they share the blame. If I walk about in the roughest part of London at night with a laptop under my arm I may be putting myself at risk but I don't share the blame 50:50 if I get robbed.

I think your analogy is flawed, because it works just as well the other way round. That guy could have been in the same spot in 99 sprints and not been involved in any incident.

At the end of any big stage there are lots of fans crowding the barriers, most are hanging over, banging the sides, leaning out to look up the road. I think it's way too simplistic to say that if anything, or body part is crossing an imaginary line up from the top of the barrier shouldn't be there.

Any rider should know that there will be arms, heads, flags etc crossing that line and keep clear. here the rider seemed to be squeezed into the 'danger zone' So was it his fault for not backing off? The other riders fault for squeezing him, or the random guy's fault for being the one being hit.

If the 'squeeze' had happened 1m earlier it would probably still been a crash, but when he hit someone else.

Still the fans have a responsibility to be as safe as is reasonable, and using a 200mm lens seems daft to me. You will have no idea, while looking through it, of the real perspectives and how close the riders are. This would make it very hard to be properly aware of where everyone is.

So all in all a terrible accident, but not one where you can point blame at any one individual.

adr82

philwint wrote:

At the end of any big stage there are lots of fans crowding the barriers, most are hanging over, banging the sides, leaning out to look up the road. I think it's way too simplistic to say that if anything, or body part is crossing an imaginary line up from the top of the barrier shouldn't be there.

Maybe it's idealistic, but it shouldn't be difficult for people to understand that when you have a large bunch contesting a sprint finish on a narrow road, hanging over the barriers is a very bad idea. It's a lot different when the road is wider, the bunch is smaller and the finish isn't as fast, but in a finale like that one the entire road is always going to be used.

philwint wrote:

Any rider should know that there will be arms, heads, flags etc crossing that line and keep clear. here the rider seemed to be squeezed into the 'danger zone' So was it his fault for not backing off? The other riders fault for squeezing him, or the random guy's fault for being the one being hit.

I think they are justified in having a reasonable expectation that fans will stay out of their way. You can argue he was trying to find a gap that wasn't there, but how many times does that happen in any mass sprint without resulting in a crash?

philwint wrote:

Still the fans have a responsibility to be as safe as is reasonable, and using a 200mm lens seems daft to me. You will have no idea, while looking through it, of the real perspectives and how close the riders are. This would make it very hard to be properly aware of where everyone is.

... which is why you don't use a lens like that in a situation like this if you have any sense, and another reason why the majority of the blame should be placed on the fan.

frenchfighter

Check out this fans perspective of the crash:
https://www.facebook.com/Siamo.Ciclisti?fref=nf

So you can see the idiots landing out but what you can't see in this clip is where Contador is.

hammerite

OnYourRight wrote:

Good to see he can control his fingers. There was chat he couldn’t feel his arm, suggesting nerve damage (to me, but I know nothing about this stuff).

That is possible. There's lots going on up there, when I snapped mine they decided not to operate due to the number of nerves around the shoulder and that part of the arm. The consultant said he thought my break was clean enough not to warrant risking it. Once I had my brace off you could see the bend in my arm where it didn't heal straight, thankfully once the muscle grew back it looked normal.

frenchfighter

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/colli-t ... alia-crash

Paul 8v

OK, back in England now and I have internet access. I was actually standing almost opposite where this happened, it's odd as we didn't know it was a spectator until later that day, there were two big skid marks going across the road, it looked like he skidded on a white line but it was bone dry. There was nothing in the road as they'd just done a litter pick.

I still haven't seen the actual footage but I was using my friends camera to video it as I'd left my phone in the car in Grosseto. It should have a pretty good view of what went on. I hope he manages to get the video off OK as he isn't the best with computers and isn't back in the UK for a few more days.

The reactions of the majority of the riders to avoid the crash can only be described as ninja. They must have been going 60km/h!

Paul 8v

https://www.facebook.com/petherton1/vid ... nref=story

OK, so the video proves to be inconclusive. No matter how many times I watch it I can't see Contador. I certainly didn't see him go down on the day but I was concentrating more on the poor sod in orange!

adr82

Paul 8v wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/petherton1/videos/10155573646770384/?pnref=story

OK, so the video proves to be inconclusive. No matter how many times I watch it I can't see Contador. I certainly didn't see him go down on the day but I was concentrating more on the poor sod in orange!

I can't find it right now, but I'm sure there's a video looking down the finishing straight that shows Contador falling, further back up the road from the first crash. Since you were almost directly across from the first one he was probably still to your left, and on that side of the road too so he'd probably have been hard to see without leaning out and looking left.

Paul 8v

adr82 wrote:

Paul 8v wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/petherton1/videos/10155573646770384/?pnref=story

OK, so the video proves to be inconclusive. No matter how many times I watch it I can't see Contador. I certainly didn't see him go down on the day but I was concentrating more on the poor sod in orange!

I can't find it right now, but I'm sure there's a video looking down the finishing straight that shows Contador falling, further back up the road from the first crash. Since you were almost directly across from the first one he was probably still to your left, and on that side of the road too so he'd probably have been hard to see without leaning out and looking left.

Ah that would make sense. I thought he went down with this guy.