Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 3: Lorient - Pontivy, 183.9 km

[Breezy1985]

If you're seriously blaming the riders for every single one of these crashes, delete your account. Like telling a kid he should cross a motorway and then blaming the kid for their death.

What was wrong with the road ?

I did not see anything wrong where Thomas crashed or Rog crashed or Madous or the Sagan crash

 

[HelloDolly]

Nibali not in top 10 afterall but only 3 seconds outside top 10

 

[CyclistAbi]

People being OK with this and going in defending mode should get their heads checked.

 

[woodburn]

I'll walk away from this Tour and wait for the Vuelta if this happens

Why? Seems like the riders had predicted what would happen with this course design of downhill finish with sharp turns on first sprint stage. Tour didn't listen to them and now some guys have serious injuries.

It might seem like nothing to you but these wipe out months and years of work and are painful and difficult to recover from. They're not robots out there. It's not a video game. Riders have to advocate for their safety or nobody else will.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

Carnage. Especially the crash on that narrow winding road a few km before the line could have been avoided with an easier section so close to the finish of sprint stage. I didn't see Thomas' crash but it's bad for him. Roglic's crash looked bad, regarding not just time lost but performance in next few days. Bad luck for him on French road continues. I don't know what happened to Pog (if he crashed or was just stopped by a crash). He still did ok time-wise but Carapaz gained time.

 

[Rollthedice]

That one corner on the 2nd crash was pretty freaking dangerous. The house on the left hand side of riders felt like narrowing the road even further on the corner itself. Mohoric, as the bike handler he is, managed to avoid crashing to the wall of that house with quick move in front of peloton, but half of his team crashed behind a second later. The speed was just too high for the entire peloton to make out of it safe.

That's correct and and it was dumb from the organizers but all the other crashes were stupid rider mistakes.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

What was wrong with the road ?

I did not see anything wrong where Thomas crashed or Rog crashed or Madous or the Sagan crash

Its width, in combination with many downhills and tight bends. The crash at 4k to go was completely inevitable, the others were also likely. I made a post criticising the finale a few minutes before the first crash too, it was quite predictable unfortunately.

 

[Volderke]

Jack Haig DNF

 

[Leinster]

Roglic crash was outside 8km anyway

They can't put the Rog crash down to course design. He was JRA and went down.

 

[bambino]

That's correct and and it was dumb from the organizers but all the other crashes were stupid rider mistakes.

Totally agree

 

[titan31]

Yeah, none of those roads were narrower than the finale into San Remo, or the old finish of Paris-Tours. Roglic's crash came with 8-10 riders spread across the road, and he was just too close to the edge.

The only bit of course design I'd maybe take issue with is the Bahrain crash; with all the talk about the Tour of Poland stage finish that took out Jakobsen, I'm not sure why a TdF sprint stage had to have a fast downhill so close to the end, and certainly not one without a proper climb just before to stretch things out. But even at that, it looked to be a fairly standard left-hand bend, where someone just shot off up the driveway.

MSR finale is after 280km that has gone over hills and due to the length had reduced the size and speed of the peleton.

Today, pretty much pan flat with a full peleton going at sprint train speed.

Theres a giant difference.

 

[IndianCyclist]

Roglic's crash maybe due to rustiness. It is one thing to train alone but moving in the peloton at high speed requires some racing close to the goal

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Jack Haig DNF

I'll be very glad if he gets out of this without permanent damage. Looked horrible. In any case, he would have every right to sue ASO.

 

[Breezy1985]

Why? Seems like the riders had predicted what would happen with this course design of downhill finish with sharp turns on first sprint stage. Tour didn't listen to them and now some guys have serious injuries.

It might seem like nothing to you but these wipe out months and years of work and are painful and difficult to recover from. They're not robots out there. It's not a video game. Riders have to advocate for their safety or nobody else will.

And who was thinking of rider safety when Sagan and Ewan were shoulder tackling each other in the sprints. Pro cyclists love double standards

 

[Rollthedice]

Nibali not in top 10 afterall but only 3 seconds outside top 10

Tomorrow another sprint stage, top 5 within reach.

 

[spalco]

Dont agree with Eisel that roads are the problem or that organizer should plan it better.

I don’t want riders on motorways…

If anything is it necessary for all the GC guys to be up there with all the sprinters?

Teams and riders need to rethink how they race these finals. They are causing a lot of stress and intense racing that then causes the crashes. There are too many riders up there.

The only thing that's really needed is a gentlemen's agreement to form a favourites' gruppetto on flat stages.

The fat guys work together on the climbs, the small guys could too on potentially dangerous sprint finishes.

 

[luckyboy]

Good grief...some of you guys are idiots...the course was fine. These are pro riders...not you. The road was plenty wide. Riders are to blame for these crashes. Need more respect for each other.

lol here we go. Default CN response anytime something like this happens to the riders. Time to slurp some ASO boot.

The course is perfect! How dare you blame the course designers! The riders are all wusses and always to blame!

Never mind that they requested before the stage to take GC times at 8km and were ignored...

 

[Rackham]

People being OK with this and going in defending mode should get their heads checked.

In these cases personal bias clouds judgement. If someone crashes & loses the GC, people who don't like that guy tend to cheer.

Roglic's crash maybe due to rustiness. It is one thing to train alone but moving in the peloton at high speed requires some racing close to the goal

Case in point. What sort of projecting fantastical stuff is this? From the camera view we all saw, he was seemingly jettisoned out to the left for xyz reasons.

You don't know so your 'theory' is not worth much.

 

[woodburn]

MSR finale is after 280km that has gone over hills and due to the length had reduced the size and speed of the peleton.

Today, pretty much pan flat with a full peleton going at sprint train speed.

Theres a giant difference.

You also have a select group of riders fighting for the front in classics.

In a GT, you've got both sprinters and their teams plus GC guys and their teams wanting the same real estate.

 

[Leinster]

What was wrong with the road ?

I did not see anything wrong where Thomas crashed or Rog crashed or Madous or the Sagan crash

I don't like sprint finishes with a kink at the end. If a town is big enough to host the Tour de France, it's big enough to have 300m of straight road/commercial boulevard somewhere so that riders aren't swerving to dodge barriers at full tilt.

 

[movingtarget]

Looks like Haig is another GC casualty.

 

[Broccolidwarf]

Or how about too narrow roads at unremittingly high speeds, with not difficulties to break up the bunch, in the early stages of a Tour that puts excessive performance presure on ALL riders...and you have the disaster scenarious we have witnessed thus far. Poor course design does nothing to mitigate the likelhood of mass crashes, rider presure and nerves do the rest.

But it will always be a question of balance.

Sure, at one extreme, you could ride an entire stage on the same motorway - or for that matter on a F1 track - from end to end, but it would be incredibly boring (and incredibly hard for spectators to get to, if it's the motorway example).

On the other hand, the more warrying terrain, of warrying quality, you use, the more dangerous the race becomes, but also the more exiting to watch.

I don't think a (wide) 2-lane road is particularly abnormal in cycling, nor particularly dangerous.

It's just that the pressure is so much higher in the Tour, that every riders tries a little too hard.

 

[ngent41]

a typical TDF sprint stage and this forum is filled with posts saying how boring it was and why do they even waste time with stages like this, who wants to watch nothing happen for 4 hours etc. Lots of action happens, and now everyone wants to go back to boring nothing happening sprint stages?

 

[Breezy1985]

Its width, in combination with many downhills and tight bends. The crash at 4k to go was completely inevitable, the others were also likely. I made a post criticising the finale a few minutes before the first crash too, it was quite predictable unfortunately.

How were Rog, Thomas and Sagan predictable

 

[zlev11]

lol Roglic just got body checked off the road by Colbrelli, had nothing to do with rust