The Tour de France has problems with unruly fans
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The Frenchman Romain Bardet struggles in a flaming cloud of smoke in the Tour de France. (Photo AP / Peter Dejong)
The Tour de France threatened to sink into chaos when the riders climbed into the Alps during Thursday's 12th stage, with fans on the course and flares. It became so bad that Vincenzo Nibali, the 2014 champion, was completely eliminated from the circuit while he was trying to navigate a smoky tunnel of fans with 3.8 kilometers to go on his ascent of the race. Alpe d'Huez. [19659003] Haurem to hope the video of algun aficionat for that qu ha ha passat Nibali amb. The motorbike seguia el grup has gotten trobat from another provocat per una bengala. # TDF2018 pic.twitter.com/oUQ3YgbTbc
– Javier Gilabert ? (@tourdegila) July 19, 2018
"There were two police motorcycles I was following [rider Chris] Froome I felt good, then it slowed down and I fell, "said Nibali, who finished the special but later discovered that he had fractured a vertebra in the wreckage. "It hurt my back",
Fans seemed to be directing most of their angry excitement towards Froome, the four-time Team Sky Tour winner who had been cleared of doping charges for a few days before. The tour started earlier this month. Thursday, a fan would have spit on the Englishman. Another gave him what the AFP described as "a generous slap in the back".
"On the side of the road, it has been quiet for ten days, with very few anti-Sky or anti-Froome banners. But suddenly, we saw a lot more, "Froome told reporters, via AFP. "All I can do is renew the calls for calm, good sense and serenity vis-à-vis the runners of the Tour de France"
"Do not whistle and, obviously, do not not touch the runners. "
Geraint Thomas, stage winner, group leader and teammate of Froome Team Sky, was booed at once while he was crossing the finish line and stood on the winner's podium, and now director of the Tour Christian Prudhomme has about enough.
"The climb of Alpe d'Huez was painful", he declared, according to AFP. "The Tour riders, the champions of this race, must be respected."
While the dramatic visuals of runners browsing the cords of tight fans are one of the points Tour, he now seems out of hand.Prudhomme chose selfie fans – suggesting that officials could prevent them from running behind the runners during mountain stages – and those who lit flares along the course.
"They have only one wish, be on TV and selfie," Prudhomme told AFP. "We have no desire to see him again."
"Flares must not belong to bicycle races, they make runners breathe in the harmful air, and they blind them," he added. "It just does not make sense."
[Flares cause fire during Canadian soccer match]
The Tour faced such chaos in the past. During the 1975 Tour de France, a Frenchman reached out and hit the Belgian Eddy Merckx, five-time winner of the 14th stage, in the bottom of the abdomen. opportunities.
"He did worse than the wind Merckx: He broke the fragile pact, the bond of trust that exists between runners and the public," wrote Richard Moore of Bicycling.com in 2015.
More recently Team Sky Runner Richie Porte claimed to have been hit by a fan at a mountain stage in 2015 and then had words with a fan who shouted at him "Dope!" while he was returning to the team bus at the end of the special. "I do not think I deserve to be hit just to do my job," said the Australian at the time.
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