Rider safety has been in the spotlight for the second day running at the Tour de France today, with helicopter footage capturing the moment LottoNL-Jumbo rider George Bennett collided with a fan who stepped into the road as the race headed through Andorra.
Luckily the New Zealander wasn’t travelling at high speed, but even so we’re guessing the impact would have been akin to getting flattened by an All Black forward, and it resulted in the fan crashing to the ground and, presumably, pretty dazed.
Bennett, aged 26 and making his debut in the race, managed to stay upright and finished the stage in seventh place and rises to 33rd overall, more than 26 minutes down on race leader Chris Froome of Team Sky.
Yesterday, on his way to winning Stage 8 of the race and take the yellow jersey, Froome was filmed hitting a fan who had got far too close for comfort. the defending champion was fined 200 Swiss Francs as a result of the incident.
8 thoughts on “Tour de France: George Bennett knocks fan over”
Spectator abuse porn has been
Spectator abuse porn has been ace recently.
More!
unconstituted wrote:
Had to recover my seldom used password to ‘like’ this comment 😀
Living in a golden age, the
Living in a golden age, the tide turned when Voelker got off his bike and made some hecklers apologise. Next we’ll see Stannard ram one of those flares up somebodies arse, they look suffocating
Yep, that’ll happen when you
Yep, that’ll happen when you step out onto the road during a bike race… Darwin’s theory in action.
Next we’ll see Stannard ram
Next we’ll see Stannard ram one of those flares up somebodies arse, they look suffocating
Most of them weigh about 9kg, and you wouldn’t be frightened if they were angry with you. Stannard, on the other hand, is someone you wouldn’t argue with.
Later on the riders had to
Later on the riders had to dodge round someone running in the middle of the road. Dunno if it does seem like spectators are getting in the way more this year or a couple just seem to have been caught on camera.
Bloody amazing bit of riding.
Bloody amazing bit of riding. Impact at speed hard enough to flatten the spectator and he keeps it upright.
Hope no real damage was done to rider, bike and dumbass spectator (he’s a twit but that had to hurt).
Looks to me as if he lunges
Looks to me as if he lunges at the moment of impact so his shoulder hits the spectator rather than his wheel or bars. So the rugby analogy is pretty apt.