******* Olympic Cycling

Just jump on your bike and tag along. 

Originally posted by jeffers Or stick some french TV stickers on your car and just drive on through.....

Can't get the video to play properly, but assuming it is the camera car knocking the bike over, the driver is dodging a tree. The organizers give the camera cars and bikes full access in order to maximize revenues from TV, and encourage sponsors to pay the riders. Yes, the driver is a muppet, but he is paid to get as close as possible. If the Tour want a safer race, then they need to ban cars and bikes from the peleton, but I'm pretty sure greed will win out.

 

Originally posted by JimC Though this damn games was suppose to encourage sport, not prevent it...

...and there was me thinking that the idea of "the games" was to spend all the money so that there was none left for encouraging participation in sport and fitness activities.

Originally posted by Andymac There are always going to be vehicles following a large race like the TDF. The team cars and camera bikes are well experienced in manouvering around the racing cyclist. Virtually all the team car occupants were riders in there own right, and know what to expect from a group of cyclists. I think the problem is that many of the media vehicles 'following' the TDF are driven by less experienced drivers/riders. The organisers will surely review the situation for next year and try to get a sensible balance between the riders safety and accessibility for the media.

All motorbike and car drivers following the TDF have to be accredited by the TDF organisers.  You can't just rock up and start driving/riding around the cyclists with no prior training or briefing.

I believe the problem in this case was that the car in question was actually being driven by a muppet who had not passed the TDF drivers accreditation* as it was on-hire to the French media oufit rather than one of 'their' vehicles.  Apparently, the driver was told on race radio to clear the bunch of riders they were near, unfortunately he/she interpreted that as 'get past' with not-good consequences for Flecha and Hoogerland.

Still Hoogerland's post-race interview must go down as one of the best examples of chilled out Dutch thinking ever, and forgiveness - brilliant fella.  He also climbed really well yesterday, with 50+ stitches in his backside, total legend or total nutta - the line is pretty thin in the TDF I guess!


*the motorbike rider binned 2 days previous for hooking up one cyclists bars & bringing him off, had passed!