Good God. If this keeps up the winner of the 2011 Tour de France is liable to be a disembodied head in a glass jar, rolling onto the Champs-Élysées in a Radio Flyer wagon.
Nah. UCI would never go for that. Four wheels, and who knows what’s in that glass jar? Besides a rather battered head, that is.
It wasn’t the upstairs that got torn up on Johnny Hoogerland — it was the basement, thanks to a handy barbed-wire fence that he encountered at speed after a Euro Media car piloted by a mental defective and/or homicidal lunatic clipped breakaway mate Juan Antonio Flecha, who in decking it body-checked Hoogerland through that fence. It was nearly a hat trick, but the guy who would wind up wearing yellow at the end of it all, Thomas Voeckler, managed to keep the rubber side down.
Now, I’m not saying that the driver should have been dragged from his vehicle and had the mortal shit kicked out of him, but … actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Ejected from the Tour? Dude should be ejected from the planet, in a 55-gallon drum full of scorpions, broken bottles and an iPod playing “John Tesh’s Greatest Hits” at top volume.
Meanwhile, sounds like the old decreasing-radius turn did for Vino’, Dave Z. and the rest. Having had my own holy-shit moment in one of those broken-backed sonsabitches I can feel their pain, kinda, sorta. But I was alone for mine, not auguring in with a few dozen colleagues, and I managed to stay upright. Jeebus.
Mad Blog Media 
Oh, man. That pic of Hoogerland looks painful. Try sitting on a bike seat after that one.
Yeah, that was awful. And entirely unnecessary. Either one or both of those guys could have been killed.
Good thing that asshat didn’t clip Jens Voigt. France Television would have themselves a broken car and a couple of employees minus their arms and legs.
That’s the kind of shit driving one expects from Joe Schmoe on his cell phone back here in the states. I suspect that asshat won’t be tolerated in the peloton after today. Hope not, anyway.
He got the old heave-ho, K. But he should’ve gotten a puck in the gob.
Stateside I’ve given up looking for drivers on cell phones and tried to spot drivers without ’em. Talk about your rara avis.
That driver made a vicious acceleration as he came upon them and never tooted his horn, either. Very weird and horrible.
Maybe this asshat is related to the asshat who decided that she was going to honk her horn trying to get me over as I was riding down the street this morning. Sadly for her I did not since there are huge emblems indicating “Share the Road” up and down the street. Add that to the fact that when she passed me I noticed that she had a disabled placard on her license plate. Add to that when she finally came to a stop at the next intersection, she got out and walked into the Catholic church. So we can naturally assume that honking asshats are either Catholics late for church………or crappy French drivers!
There was a slightly different picture of him and the fence. You can see that he hit one of those posts hard enough to snap it off at he ground. It’s not enough that that have them packed onto roads shoulder to shoulder, but they have to deal with the loonies in the cars too.
I think he was going to be getting a number of stitches which won’t make riding any fun. At least Vino didn’t break his pelvis as was first reported (rolls eyes) and it was just a femur and wrist.
I’ve taken to calling it the Tour de WTF. Perhaps Son of SkyLab will come out of the sky on the rest day.
Look at the poor bastard trying to get up on the podium. My, that looks like it feels just swell. As in swollen.
I think I’ve seen black and white moives featuring Lon Channey walking in that.
Jeff, I read that he broke the head of the femur. My aunt just broke the head of the femur and was able to have a certain type of screw inserted to enable her to walk again and prior to surgery we didn’t know if she would ever walk again. I hope Vino will be able to walk normally again – as I’m sure you do, too.
Libby – The head of the femur is a different ball game and not a good one. I’m glad your Aunt is up and about. Hopefully, Vino will be too.
They should get the same time as the Voeckler group. That just sucks 50 different kind of ways. Very difficult to watch. Also sad that DZ is out.
Agreed, Sharon. Who expects to get clipped by a friggin’ TV car in a bike race? Where does that get addressed in The Big Book O’ Rules? Oh, yeah, here it is:
“Article 66.6.666: A rider struck by an official caravan vehicle shall receive his actual finishing time unless he is dragged by the vehicle to within the final 3km.”
I was so hot about this, I had to go out for a ride to cool off. Lots of luck of that, it’s 100 degrees out.
But, how about this one Pat – –
Article 1.011
when stupid %&it happens, race officials who have said skills, may use logic and reason to make things right.
WTF was a TV car doing on the road any way? Taking video? – no – that’s what the moto’s and helios do. Commentating? – no – that’s what the screen monitoring geeks do. The TdF needs to look at seriously reducing the traffic – both auto and moto. From my admittedly non-expert eye it looks close to being out of control.
-Chris
Chris, France Television described the EuroMedia auto as “a technical assistance vehicle,” which I can only assume means “the dudes with the wine.”
Here’s an interesting story from James Raia about the size of the circus that follows the riders around. Four thousand vehicles for 198 cyclists. I’ve lived in smaller towns.
So kicking the vehicle out is really no punishment at all!
hated what happened,but I loved the rant, classic mad dog.
esp. the “John Tesh’s Greatest Hits”
I used to drive support vehicles, including support motorcycle, for big bike races in Hawaii (hey, man, it was the only way I could avoid being dropped…) You gotta have your shit in gear 101% of the time. You are on the edge a lot. One bad move or brain fart and people get hurt–including you. So I’m not entirely ignorant of the possibility of stuff like we saw today. Hell, I recall getting one of the official’s car airborne on a back road on Oahu while keeping the race official in contact with a peloton that included a youthful Jan Ulrich during the Tour de Hawaii. That was fun!
4,000 vehicles in a bike race almost guarantees that most are irrelevant and that someone will fuck up and take someone down. Pare down the fleet. We ditched most of the caravan for critical technical sections of the Dick Evans rather than risk a fuckup like today’s. Unfortunately or fortunately, that meant me on the moto riding herd on the bunch. I loved it.
WTF was that tree sticking out of the black top doing there? Didn’t anyone notice that in the pre-ride and see if could have been removed? What a travesty of a stage that was. Pegged adrenaline, wet to dry to wet roads, decreasing radius corners, shit for brains drivers of non-essential autos. Glad I’m not a professional cyclist.
That tree would never pass FHWA standards, Boz, but why that shit for brains driver didn’t mentally register “tree by side of road, be careful” is a little odd anyway.
Like O’G, I suspect he was in charge of getting the wine up the road for the officials and just didn’t notice he was plowing through the break.
We lost a rider in Albuquerque a few years back when a young driver tried to pass cyclists into oncoming traffic. When she noticed she was going to hit someone head on (kinda like hitting a tree) she veered into a rider at high speed and killed him. Almost took out the guy’s wife, too. Not to mention, the driver got away with it. In New Mexico, its almost impossible to be held accountable for fucked up driving.
// 4,000 vehicles in a bike race almost guarantees that most are irrelevant and that someone will fuck up and take someone down. Pare down the fleet. //
Like in Paris – Roubaix. You got most of the road where everyone gets to drive, then spots where all but the select few have to detour around to a jump-ahead spot, and IIRC, a few sections where no one gets to drive at all. Any place where the road isn’t two full lanes with full shoulders, all but essentials should be skipping ahead to a checkpoint where they can rejoin. Not that hard. Just like planning logistics for a movement to contact. The Bradleys and Abrams roll ahead wherever they want, the Engineers and ADA leapfrog, and the supply trains follow along via a main supply route, sometimes on the same avenue of advance and sometimes on their own trail. (See, I told you this army training would come in handy some day!)
My prediction for today’s rest day: Jacky Durand attacks!
I watched the video clip – my guess is the TV guy was blabbing away to the other guys in the car, looked up as (he violated the order NOT to pass the breakaway and leave room for Voekler’s team car to pass) the tree loomed ahead and juked the wheel to the right, forgetting about the poor guys on bikes in the road. Don’t know who the guy is but with all the ex-pros and ex-directors out there looking for work, there is ZERO excuse for having some bozo like this piloting a car anywhere near the actual bike race. As you might guess, here in Italy, RCS/La Gazzetta is having a field day with the Tour chaos after taking so much crap about dangerous stuff in the Giro.
Our group climbed the Passo Stelvio today under glorious blue skies and is now resting up for the “tappone” tomorrow – 118 kms/3150 meters of elevation gain over the Mortirolo and Gavia (73 miles/10,080 ft in those oddball English measurements) if they do it all. Yours truly took the day off the bike to rest up for Passo Gavia tomorrow. I managed to make it up and over the Marmolada (Fedaia) this year, one of the most mentally challenging climbs there is — I might be pushing my luck with the Gavia but it’s my last big mountain ride of the season so “do or die” it will be. Actually, more like “do or climb in the van” to be honest.
That ride sounds challenging and wonderful, Larry.
We are slowly getting our roads back around here. Route 4 into the mountains is open. The section near Los Alamos ain’t bad but farther into the Jemez Mountains, its blackened ruins from that big fire. When Camp May Road opens up to our ski area, we will have our tough ride back, which is about 60 miles and 6200 feet of climbing, between 6000 and 9000 ft altitude, in a big version of our Los Alamos County loop ride.
For those who missed it yesterday, here is a video of that crash. The TV car driver looks like he was just totally oblivious to the relationship between his car and the riders. You can’t have that level of incompetence in a bike race. Obviously.
I bet if had hit Voelker, the guillotine would pressed into service!
I leaped off the couch and cursed that driver to Holy Hell when that happened! I’m sure that sonofabitch could hear me from Wisconsin. My wife rushed into the Man Cave to see if I had cut my arm off or something. They’ve got Hoogerland using some kind of NASA designed commpression suit on his legs to minimize swelling. Don’t have the link handy. Ye gods he got tore up!
Hoogerland is one of the old school hard men. He’s talking about defending the jersey. I can’t imagine sitting on the sofa and thinking about riding after all that.
I’m hoping that he keeps the Polka Dots unil the podium in Paris. (And Gilbert in green for that matter too)
One of the true hard men of Le Tour. Here he is on his new ride.
http://twitpic.com/5oipd1
He’s planning on defending the jersey.
Now that’s guts.
Or just access to some really good painkillers….
If he can defend the Polka Dots I have a new hero.