Make Them Pay

Being a professional bike rider is a dangerous job, whether mountain biking, road racing or track racing. But some people just don’t seem to get this.

Every year, millions of people turn out to watch professional bike races all around the world, none more so than the Tour de France. You’d think that anyone going to watch a bike race would be smart enough to keep out of the way when the bikes go past. Apparently not.

It’s becoming more and more common that a nosy spectator puts the whole peloton at risk by standing in clearly the wrong place when the action is happening. We’ve all seen it before – the notorious ‘Yellow Woman’ who got in the way of Alexander Vinokourov during Stage 1 of the 2011 Tour de France and took out two-thirds of the peloton in the process, or the man who ran directly in front of Sebastian Langeveld during the Tour of Flanders earlier this year, causing him to crash over his handlebars and break his collarbone. There was even a well-publicised incident in the Tour de France last year, where costumed spectators ran a little too close to Alberto Contador and even tried touching the defending champion, who was forced to push them back in order to keep racing.

Though wanting a good view of the race or a chance to get up close and personal with the riders is fair enough, the middle of a race – literally – is not the right time or place to do it. While it might be cool for the fans, the riders can lose concentration or time, or they can crash and wind up with several months of painful recovery and a hold put on their career because someone didn’t have the sense to get out of the way. Nothing excuses causing that kind of carnage in the Tour de France – or any bike race, for that matter. It’s thoughtless, extremely dangerous, and the spectators involved should be made to pay for their actions.

And by pay, I mean they should be fined.

Breaching the road laws that govern the interactions of motorists and pedestrians frequently results in a hefty fine, so why not do the same for spectators who impede cyclists? The driver who critically injured New Zealand cyclist Michael Torckler in a hit-and-run late last month is facing almost 10 years in prison for a multitude of offences surrounding the incident, so fining spectators who get in the way of cyclists is far from a radical suggestion.

Rabobank’s Luis Léon Sánchez would likely welcome the idea. The Spaniard was swamped by eager fans running alongside him and touching him as he climbed the Col de Grosse Pierre on Stage 7 of this year’s Tour, the race commissaires powerless to do anything to help him. Sánchez heads a list of riders with similar experiences in this year’s Tour alone, some of the incidents more dangerous than others. The Tour de France organisers have even started appealing to the public to stay clear of the riders and respect the race. Though it’s disappointing that it’s become necessary, the message would go down a lot faster if transgressors were slapped with fines rather than just the cyclist’s free hand.

The Team with the EDGE

The more I hear, the more I'm convinced: this is certainly Australia's year in cycling.  Despite being all the way "Down Under", we're following up a maiden Tour de France win with our own first-ever ProTour cycling team - and what a bloody good team it's shaping up to be!

Despite the transfer season still not having opened, news is filtering through the cognoscenti of the line-up of the new Aussie team, which since the last update seems to include every Australian rider on the ProTour circuit.

Rumours were floating about the two big Aussie names the team was looking to sign - Robbie McEwen and Stuey O'Grady.  While not a peep has been heard from the Radioshack sprinter, Leopard Trek's O'Grady has indeed signed to GreenEDGE and is probably looking forward to riding in his national team for the first time ever.  As suspected, young Tassie rider Richie Porte has re-signed with Team Saxobank Sungard, and as expected BMC's Cadel Evans has also renewed his contract there.

But almost every other Aussie in the professional peloton seems to be jumping on board.  Two of my three top picks of the young Aussies were announced as being headhunted by GreenEDGE, and to my utter delight all three of them have been signed!  Jack Bobridge and brother team Cameron and Travis Meyer, who have more world titles between them than I can remember anymore (four, I think - two to Cameron and one to each of the others) have all jumped ship from Team Garmin-Cervelo to GreenEDGE, where I'm hopeful at least one of them will be given the chance to make their debut in a grand tour.

While all these signings were foreshadowed if not expected, a new name has appeared on the radar - Simon Gerrans!  Team Sky's 'Gerro' is returning to home soil with his national team.  As for the other Aussies, Mark Renshaw has left the folding HTC-Highroad team to join Dutch team Rabobank but there is no word on the rest, meaning riders like Matty Goss are still up for grabs.

There are of course a few international riders who've also been signed.  Promising young Eritrean neo Daniel Teklehaymanot was the very first rider to join the team, while Dutch talents Pieter Weening and Sebastian Langeveld have both left their national team to help boost GreenEDGE's Spring Classics profile.

Ironically enough, in their guide to rider transfers for this season, Cycling News had to retrospectively add GreenEDGE to the list of teams signing riders due to the large number of riders they were pinching from the other teams.  All bar one of these teams are ProTour teams who rode the Tour de France this year.  Is it just me, or is this a very promising omen for EDGE?