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news
Nacer Bouhanni (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 by Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick on Wikimedia Commons).PNGNacer Bouhanni to miss Tour de France after late-night hotel punch-up
Nacer Bouhanni will miss the Tour de France after undergoing surgery on his right hand, which he injured in an altercation with three men at a hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The 25-year-old was staying in the hotel in Besançon with other members of his Cofidis team on the eve of the French national road championships.
According to the team, the sprinter and his brother Rayane were continually disturbed by noise from drunken guests in an adjacent room.
When Bouhanni – a pretty decent boxer who has said he will focus on that sport when his cycling career ends – remonstrated with them, he was assaulted, Cofidis says.
During the scuffle, the cyclist sustained a hand injury that required four stitches, while newspaper reports suggest one of his alleged assailants lost two teeth.
In a statement, the team said that the wound had not been treated properly, leading Bouhanni to undergo an operation in Nancy yesterday evening.
With his long-term health in mind, the team has therefore decided to pull the rider from the race, with his place taken by Nicolas Edet.
Bouhanni is equally combative on the bike as in the ring.
In March, he was relegated after winning a sprint at Paris-Nice after clashing with Orica-GreenEdge’s Michael Matthews, and last month headbutted Katusha’s Alexandre Kristoff towards the end of a stage in the Critérium du Dauphiné.
A winner of five stages in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana, Bouhanni is still looking for his first stage victory in his home Grand Tour – and will now have to wait another 12 months for his next chance.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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10 comments
Does Bouhanni have a nickname? I propose 'Rocky'.
He should have used his head . . . like he did in the Dauphiné.
I wonder what Bouhanni will do when he retires from cycling. Any ideas?
Fighters injure their hands all the time. Look at Joe Calzaghe or Naseem Hamed, both had serious hand problems.
Actual boxers don't injure their hands. It's one of the first skills they learn, probably equivalent to cyclists releasing their feet from the pedals.
Actual boxers wear gloves. I don't suppose it would have looked good if the rider had put on the boxing gloves he undoubtedly had in his room before bashing the noise-makers.
Earplugs?
Noise can drive you insane when trying to sleep. If he tried to get staff to deal with it, who couldn't or wouldn't, then yes his next step is to try and ask them himself. Maybe blew up in his face, and he's a no nonsense sort of bloke, so it came to blows.
Or maybe he just went over there and started laying into them lol
That said, he has other priorities so he needs to be smarter than that. He has a team to think about which means you don't get yourself into situations that can go wrong.
Given the for he is (was) on he could have nabbed a stage or two. What an utter tool.
I presume he had already asked the hotel staff to tell them to keep it down...
He may have won the fight, but losing a few hours sleep is better than getitng into a fight and losing a few weeks of pro-cycling