Tour de France riders have been targeted with nails by ‘morons’ as they attempted to complete the second stage.
This year, Le Tour set off from the Basque region of Spain before it will cross into France for the next few weeks, but on yesterday’s second stage in San Sebastian several riders reported punctures while cycling through the Spanish countryside.
It’s not great, is it?
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They’ve already got to cycle 209 kilometres in a single day, it’s tough enough without getting nails chucked into your tyres along the way.
One of the riders, Lilian Calmejane, shared a picture afterwards that showed the damage that had been done to his tyres after the race.
As you can see, there’s at least five nails in there.
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“Thank you for this kind of human bulls***,” he tweeted - in his native French, obviously.
“I don’t think I was the only victim of a puncture in the end… know that you can fall and get really hurt with your bulls**t, you morons.”
It’s a fair point he makes.
Imagine if someone had fallen off and landed on any of these nails – things could have been a whole lot worse.
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On race radio, there were a number of punctures reported around 20km from the finishing point for the day.
About 15 or 20 racers were involved, and the race organiser ASO has launched an investigation into what happened.
INEOS Grenadiers’ British cyclist Tom Pidcock suffered a slow puncture, making it to the finish in the end.
There was also a puncture for Luke Durbridge from the Jayco-Alula team.
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He found his tyres full of nails as well.
There were also punctures reported by representatives of the Groupama-FDJ team, as well as Lotto Dstny stating that two of their riders were affected.
This situation is reminiscent of an incident in 2012 when loads of riders and some of the race accompanying motorbikes suffered punctures during an ascent to Mur de Peguere on the 14th stage of that year’s tour.
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Yesterday (2 July), Victor Lafay of Cofidis won the second stage, crushing his rivals with just under a kilometre left to beat off a spirited chase to the line in the final metres.
General classification favourites Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard stayed in the hunt, though Pogačar finished third to claim some valuable bonus seconds as the 24-year-old Slovenian bids for a third win at cycling’s most famous race.
As it stands, British rider Adam Yates still wears the coveted yellow jersey, having claimed victory in the first stage.
Topics: Weird, World News, Sport
Tom Wood