fatsprintking said:
Don't you think you are mixing up your concepts just a bit? If two blokes mouth off during a race and then afterwards they go toe to toe and one gets the **** kicked out of him, then no ones going to cough up their flat white over that, and hell we might even feel happy that an old dude slapped some young jerk around.
But if a bloke does his nanna and brings someone down on purpose thats just an old git going mental. If he was in his car it would be road rage and he would be charged. Stuff the he said/she said guff - this comes down to how far Aitkins went over the line, not whether he went over the line. There is a big difference between defending your position in the bunch and your brain exploding.
I agree with this completely. Obviously the "he had it coming" crowd fees differently and continues to drone on.
fatsprintking said:
I dont know how it goes down in the states, but by the sounds of it there is a bit of a rollerball mentality in your crits. In Australia, the European pro's seem to be able to race crits all summer with the locals with few issues.
An intentional takeout is incredibly rare. I've never actually seen this happen, ever. That's why this is such a big deal. I've seen fights in the parking lot after a race. I see a lot of smack-talking in crits, which is par for the course. I see wheels chopped intentionally in almost every crit, but it's done in a manner than guys just give up the spot. The physics is pretty simple on this one. If someone hits your front wheel, you're gonna crash. That's why I find all of the nonsense about the size of the one dude to be funny. My 11 year old niece could take down a 200 pound rider. Any rider can intentionally crash out any other rider if they want to, so I'm not sure why the keyboard vigilantes keep focusing one this part of it.
Yeah, he should have just said "sorry, dude", even if he wasn't at fault. That's what I'd have done. But I'm not a crit specialist and Howe is, so who knows what goes on in their heads? As far as Howe having fault just for talking smack, though? That's just stupid. It's not a lawn bowling social, and sometimes tempers flair. It take a whole different type of d-bag to assault someone and endanger others because of it. It's not Howes' fault
if some dude can't control his emotions.
As far as the poster who described it as "he said/he said" situation, I'm under the impression that there were more than 2 people at the race.