Posted on 07/01/2011 7:58:26 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy
A theme is arising from this year's Tour...carnage. Is it just me or has this course been eating the riders alive?
There are going to be 3 or 4 survivors that limp into Paris...
Ha!
God help them if it rains on the Luz-Ardiden.
The Tour site is reporting that Vinokourov has a fractured femur, Zabriskie: broken wrist, Van Den Broeck: fractured shoulder blade, Willems: fractured collar bone. Ugh. Carnage indeed.
Was that a team car? I’ve never seen anything like that, it honestly looked intentional.
Scary tour — carnage is right! Seeing the whole team down in the trees trying to help Vinokourov, it was clear he was hurt bad. What a shame. I also wonder how these crashes affect the other riders mentally, esp. teammates.
Yup scary crash! It looked like a team car to me but I don't know what team.
It looks like the car was trying to avoid the tree, the driver wasn’t paying enough attention.
I imagine the riders are livid.
It was a TV car. He swerved to avoid a tree by the side of the road but should have braked. As Phil said, “It was disgraceful!”
voelckler has over 2 minutes on the schlecks. is that huge? is he now the fav for yellow in paris?
sorry to see thor go down today. he did the yellow proud while he wore it. like that guy.
glad to see contador sucking wind.
A lot is going to depend on how Voelcker rides in the high mountain stages. If he rides well and has good team support, he could be a contender- especially with the lead he has. It is certainly still a race with a long way to go, though. Evans and the Schlecks still have a good shot at the podium finishes if they stay out of trouble and don’t get dropped on the climbs. Just MO, of course.
I just watched a video of the polka dot jersey presentation today. (The live coverage ran out before they could do it b/c Hoogerland was so banged up.) It is just heart breaking. He took out a fence post in the fall which also nearly tore his pants completely off. That is in addition to having barbed wire tearing at his skin.
He is very emotional during the presentation of the polka dot and most aggressive rider awards. In fact he is overcome and starts to cry. I feel so badly for him and Fletcha. They were completely innocent victims of that idiot driving the TV car.
Here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJarentZE2g
This is one of the most brutal tours I can remember.
Yes there have been some nasty crashes. That team car driver needs to be banned from the rest of the tour.
I didn’t really see what caused the group to go into the woods but the car hitting the rider was unbelievable.
That car collision looks intentional to me.
The left side tires were off the road and there was a tree coming up that he was about to hit.
OK It was at about 45 km from the finish- near the sprint point. Phil said there was a lot of complaint coming over the race radio over what they were seeing on the video- which was riders pacing back into the peloton (after accidents, etc) behind team cars. They have been doing it a lot and the officials have been mostly looking the other way but it’s getting worse and the race radio is complaining.
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