SPOILER San Sebastian

drhaggis

Triple post. Ignore.

DeVlaeminck

larkim wrote:

Whoever that DD rider was that caused it should receive some sort of penalty or fine, that was sheer carelessness.

Racing incident you can't start fining riders for being careless even though I agree with you it was his fault.

Vino'sGhost

No tA Doctor wrote:

Thanks for the spoiler thread, btw. Popped in briefly but only had about 20mins to watch and it was 50km out with not much happening.

Thanks for the update on Bernal.

I thought I’d better keep the spoilers going, the racing was unremarkable but the scenery made up for it

Vino'sGhost

DeVlaeminck wrote:

larkim wrote:

Whoever that DD rider was that caused it should receive some sort of penalty or fine, that was sheer carelessness.

Racing incident you can't start fining riders for being careless even though I agree with you it was his fault.

I suspect the peloton will be less than impressed. Probably to an extent self governing.

larkim

Careless where it causes (or could cause) life threatening or career ending accidents ought to be punished in some form surely? Racing incidents are one thing in the heat of battle but I reckon his carelessness was more premeditated or at least avoidable than, say, Sagan at last year's TdF?

sherer

Missed that race and can't even find a replay on Eurosport either.. hope everyone is ok after the crash

Vino'sGhost

larkim wrote:

Careless where it causes (or could cause) life threatening or career ending accidents ought to be punished in some form surely? Racing incidents are one thing in the heat of battle but I reckon his carelessness was more premeditated or at least avoidable than, say, Sagan at last year's TdF?

Pre meditated carelessness ? Really?

DeVlaeminck

larkim wrote:

Careless where it causes (or could cause) life threatening or career ending accidents ought to be punished in some form surely? Racing incidents are one thing in the heat of battle but I reckon his carelessness was more premeditated or at least avoidable than, say, Sagan at last year's TdF?

I haven't watched it back but it looked like while the race was dawdling along he wandered across the back wheel of the rider in front and clipped it ?

The consequences of the accident are unusually severe but unless I'm wrong it was just a touch of wheels. Sagan was punished for deliberate act knowingly putting another rider at risk - we can argue the toss over whether he was actually guilty but that is what he was "convicted" of.

The incident we are discussing here had no element of intent, in fact the only person that was definitely hitting the deck was the rider at fault. We don't need to punish him because it would serve no purpose, there is already a disincentive to clipping the rider in front with your front wheel namely ending up on the tarmac.

No_Ta_Doctor

DeVlaeminck wrote:

larkim wrote:

Careless where it causes (or could cause) life threatening or career ending accidents ought to be punished in some form surely? Racing incidents are one thing in the heat of battle but I reckon his carelessness was more premeditated or at least avoidable than, say, Sagan at last year's TdF?

I haven't watched it back but it looked like while the race was dawdling along he wandered across the back wheel of the rider in front and clipped it ?

The consequences of the accident are unusually severe but unless I'm wrong it was just a touch of wheels. Sagan was punished for deliberate act knowingly putting another rider at risk - we can argue the toss over whether he was actually guilty but that is what he was "convicted" of.

The incident we are discussing here had no element of intent, in fact the only person that was definitely hitting the deck was the rider at fault. We don't need to punish him because it would serve no purpose, there is already a disincentive to clipping the rider in front with your front wheel namely ending up on the tarmac.

He looks over his shoulder and drifts a foot or two where there was space a second before. The guy in front drifts right across him. Should have been more careful? Yes. Punished? No.
On another day the guy in front could have caused a crash if there'd been nowhere for the guy behind to go.

Mad_Malx

^ +1

It looked a very innocuous clip and the consequences were much more severe than might have been expected. The peloton were pretty relaxed and maybe others weren’t particularly focussed at that point.
The guy responsible wasn’t behaving like a chopper and was guilty of a moment’s inattention, nothing more. He probably feels pretty shitty about the whole thing.

RichN95.

If that crash had resulted in no-one being injured and everyone getting up again and riding to the finish no-one would be calling for punishments. Ben King was dumb and he's admitted it and apologised, but he doesn't deserve extra blame because some big name riders got seriously hurt.

Let's remember Dimitri De Fauw. He was involved in track crash which killed Isaac Galvez. He fell into depression and eventually killed himself. Overstating blame for crashes helps no-one

larkim

Ok I'll get back in my box!

I still think there are more careful / less careless ways of looking at what's going on behind you, and especially so if you can't hold a straight line. Let's hope he learns the lesson well without sanction.

adr82

Link to Ben King's apology (I hadn't seen it until just now): https://twitter.com/BenKing89/status/10 ... 0322578432

No_Ta_Doctor

adr82 wrote:

Link to Ben King's apology (I hadn't seen it until just now): https://twitter.com/BenKing89/status/10 ... 0322578432

Jesus. Don't read the replies.

Vino'sGhost

No tA Doctor wrote:

adr82 wrote:

Link to Ben King's apology (I hadn't seen it until just now): https://twitter.com/BenKing89/status/10 ... 0322578432

Jesus. Don't read the replies.

lol i believe the phrase is nobmoomins

larkim

I wasn't going to draw attention to them on the basis that their essence is the same as mine (i.e. pointing the finger of blame at him) - though I hope I don't express the same opinion in knobmoomin-speak!

blazing_saddles

Vino'sGhost wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

adr82 wrote:

Link to Ben King's apology (I hadn't seen it until just now): https://twitter.com/BenKing89/status/10 ... 0322578432

Jesus. Don't read the replies.

lol i believe the phrase is nobmoomins

Anyone who has ever read or posted over on CN will definitely recognise the first tool to reply and know that it's pretty much what he's about.

Pross

I've never been a fan of using Twitter for things like apologies. If you genuinely feel you have something to apologise for then I would suggest you should make the effort to speak with the other party directly (or at least through their team management). Doing anything like that on Twitter is basically asking for that sort of response from trolls. Also, I'm surprised he wasn't advised not to do it as it is effectively putting your hand up and admitting liability - fortunately cycling doesn't seem to have jumped on the blame culture bandwagon but if someone did in this instance it could cause him a problem.

Vino'sGhost

Well he did use the word accident not mistake it’s hardly an admission of fault. Plus I think the point of Twitter is that it’s actually talking to a lot of people rather than the two injured cyclists, it’s a messaging /pr thing.

craigus89

99% of accidents happen because a mistake was made. I don't see how his wording matters one bit. Those calling for him to be punished have lost it surely? Not all mistakes need to be punished.

larkim

If mistakes don't need punishment (a premise I broadly agree with) how does the sport police carelessness then? F1 has some limited penalties for causing a collision, and whilst most of the time the driver isn't intentionally crashing they are doing something which is sufficiently careless to result in an accident which could have more serious consequences.

It doesn't matter if it's two stars like landa and bernal or two domestiques for a low ranked team, if Ben had been more careful in the way he checked behind him the accident wouldn't have happened. Not all accidents will be so clearly attributable to one riders carelessness, but (IMHO) this one was, so it just seems odd to me that there are no other consequences than a few riders in the peleton muttering "tut tut, don't do that again".

takethehighroad

To that end then, would you penalise Gilbert for being careless on the descent of the Portet d'Aspet? And Simon Yates later in the same stage? Both were careless enough to go too fast into a corner

How about Sagan? We didn't see what caused his crash but it's possible it was his own carelessness.

It does seem as though calls for punishment have come about because of the consequences, as opposed to the actual "crime" that was comitted

larkim

I agree it’s a judgement call. Clearly carelessness when you’re the only injured or affected party would always be a different kettle of fish, and it would always need to be taken in context. Mistakes in the heat of battle taken in an instant are very different from cruising at the front of the peloton and you could only punish careless which had a consequence (i.e. a crash). I’m no Landa or Bernal advocate, but the bottom line is if he’d kept his eyes on the road ahead, used his radio instead of looking over his shoulder (or just glanced more rapidly) one guy wouldn’t have serious facial injuries and another wouldn’t have a cracked vertebrae.

There’s a difference too between careless mistakes and racing mistakes. Difficult to judge of course. I’m slightly surprised there is no appetite for punitive sanctions on the road for things like this, but I’m still learning about the etiquette of the sport and perhaps this is just one of those things that the pros accept and self-police as best they can. Millar talks about the trust within the pro peloton, riders who you need to be careful around and those you can trust implicitly to ride well, perhaps King just added himself to a group he’d rather not have joined.

Interesting debate anyway (even if I’m a lone voice on one side!)!!

craigus89

It is interesting to discuss though. To be clear I don't think carelessness like this should be punished.

However, I'm not sure if this is too much of a tangent but consequences are important when it comes to road traffic accidents. If someone were in their car and pulled out on a cyclist who went over the bonnet, bounced up and was fine I doubt anything serious would happen except a possible insurance claim. If the cyclist was killed it would be a completely different situation even thought the 'mistake' were the same.

DeVlaeminck

larkim wrote:

If mistakes don't need punishment (a premise I broadly agree with) how does the sport police carelessness then? ".

Even at amateur level if you do something stupid in a bunch expect to get some stick for it.

I've never ridden as a pro but I assume it's the same, if you put people at risk some others are going to tell you, some are just going to avoid you, the big hitters probably get away with more than newcomers.

The bottom line is though nobody wants to touch a wheel as it hurts falling off. If a rider is pulling dangerous stunts to gain an advantage then sanctions exist already.

DeadCalm

Latour also got pretty badly hurt. He's out for four to six weeks with fractured vertebra.

blazing_saddles

TakeTheHighRoad wrote:

To that end then, would you penalise Gilbert for being careless on the descent of the Portet d'Aspet? And Simon Yates later in the same stage? Both were careless enough to go too fast into a corner

How about Sagan? We didn't see what caused his crash but it's possible it was his own carelessness.

It does seem as though calls for punishment have come about because of the consequences, as opposed to the actual "crime" that was comitted

Why would you punish Simon for something that Adam did?

In the case of Sagan, he did most certainly cause the crash chaos on stage 2, dive bombing the corner and clipping Impey.
Far more culpable of wrongdoing than just looking behind, like Ben King, but missed at the time; so, no penalty.
Luckily, no serious injury either, which is at the root of what is driving debate, here: effect, not cause.

larkim

It's always going to about effect though. There'd be no point in introducing mandatory punishments for doing something which "might" have caused an issue (unlike road traffic violations, where reading a text message doesn't need to cause an accident to be punishable).

Personally I'm more tolerant of "racing incidents" when the battle is on - whilst we (and the commissaires) expect riders to be thoughtful and lucid when the pace is up or sprints are on, I'm not always convinced it is that reasonable (though pros do talk about the slow motion effect when they're in that zone, which implies they have more control over their actions and reactions than it might seem reasonable to expect), my beef about the fall in the peloton on Saturday was that it came at a time when the pressure wasn't on quite as much, so there was time for any reasonable observer to judge that spending too much time looking over your shoulder and not watching where you were going could reasonably be expected to significantly reduce the riders ability to respond to something going pear-shaped. Add to that his drift to the rider's right (coupled with the drift of the rider in front to the left) and it was an accident with serious consequences that just shouldn't have happened. If there had been no casualties beyond a bit of road rash, I could agree with the peloton self-policing it, but the impact it had IMHO would justify some sanction or investigation. Other sports-persons have been taken through civil courts for damages for reckless or careless acts on the field of play which have caused serious injury, and whilst I don't think this incident would pass that sort of test, it could yet be the case that the injuries sustained are career threatening.

iainf72

Bernal update

http://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id ... d-recovery

DeadCalm

iainf72 wrote:

Bernal update

http://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id ... d-recovery

Jeez. That sounds a lot worse than I'd imagined.

Get well soon Egan.