Spectator throws a full water bottle in Mathieu van der Poel’s face at Paris-Roubaix. This guy that did this is a complete tos**er. Looks like he’s going to be prosecuted.
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If that happens, fingers crossed, it will be well deserved. Jail time hopefully.
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The person went to hand himself in to police.
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I’m always amazed at the people that start closing in the roads super tight when there aren’t ropes up, or that like jump in front of riders holding some sign or flag or some other stupid thing that nearly causes the rider to crash. I’m sure there have been instances of that in the past where riders do crash.
“Attempted manslaughter” seems like a bit much, Matthieu….
But the guy absolutely deserves to be prosecuted / punished.
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I agree with both points. I think MVP is taking the “if I have to be the one to put a face on how dangerous this is and make an extreme example of someone, I will” approach, and I’m glad he is.
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I beg to disagree: throwing a 1+lb object at the face of a cyclist going 30+mph could kill someone. Let alone the impact from a crash at that speed onto cobbles.
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It’s vernacular to express the danger - literally, I don’t think you can have attempted manslaughter, given that intent is the difference between manslaughter and murder.
At least it was water this time.
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Agreed 100% - no need to overegg this one, everyone knows how dangerous it was.
Watching the road season each year, I still find it worrying when you see the behaviour of spectators.
This one with MvdP is obvious but on almost every big climb or famous segment, you get almost zero marshalling, very little protective barriers and fully grown men literally running along the road to see if they can keep up with cyclists.
The whole thing is embarrasing to watch
Edit
Not forgetting the obligatory flares deployed in europe
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At least the guy handed himself in - one can only imagine what possessed him to do it and what a plum he feels like now. Alcohol?
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But this kind of crap is happening all over the place.
Concerts have had remarkably heavy items thrown at performers! From beer bottles to rocks to bags of ‘cremains’ (the ashes of a human cremated)
Yes it’s out of hand, and yes it will probably get worse**. I’m actually surprised (wish I could whisper this) that someone hasn’t been shot or beaten to death with a blunt object! Humanity is going off the rails. (There are hard right groups professing ‘no lives matter’) I’m just stunned, horrified, humiliated, mortified…
Watching professional ‘races’ by pros on Zwift would be even worse than watching golf!, but I don’t know how officials can stem this madness. Is jailing people for years going to stop it? I sadly doubt it. People seem to do this out of a need for attention, and to ‘speak out’ somehow. OR, in the past just bone jarring stupidity: walking across the course in front of riders.
I mean, when capital punishment was the rage in the US, people still killed other people. The idea of them dying for killing someone didn’t stop them from killing someone, and in a couple instances, it seemed to make the person do the crime.
To attack a cyclist riding a race is devoid of logic, except for some meaningless outburst of hate, need, anger. It’s like people attacking cyclists that aren’t racers. People run off the road, run over, things tossed at them, threatened, pushed… I have never been more pessimistic about the future of humanity than I am now.
** I heard there were some issues at the Dakar Rally a few years ago. Shooting and other craziness.
It’s definitely embarrassing. That said, I may have run next to Matteo Jorgensen for about 10 seconds towards the base of Isola 2000 in last years Tour repeatedly telling him to “f###ing go” prior to Tadej blowing by him.
Excitement for an American and a days worth of 1664 and Rose will do that, apparently, to a traditionally very reserved person
Edit: I was definitely not on the road though, in gravel/grass the full time
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Specifically regarding bike races I’m not sure this is true. Incidents involving spectators go back a very long time (e.g. Merckx being punched in the back in the 1975 Tour) and it doesn’t seem they’re getting worse or more frequent to me. It’s pretty hard to do something like this and get away with it given the number of cameras and that the vast majority of spectators are genuine cycling fans who will identify the culprit. They’ve caught this guy, they caught the woman with the sign that caused the Tour crash a few years ago, just need to give him a harsh enough punishment to send a message to any other idiots considering doing something like this.
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I’d just like to re-emphasise that both these people handed themselves in. Hardly the end of human civility.
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Good clarification! Though wonder whether they handed themselves in in the knowledge that a bunch of people knew who they were anyway, it was inevitable they would be found and so better chance of leniency by turning themselves in rather than waiting for the police to show up at the door.
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I’m surprised no nearby spectators stepped in to apprehend the gentleman that assaulted MVDP..
I wouldn’t really expect the authorities to have to find someone, or turn themselves in. As a bystander, I couldn’t see doing nothing..
Did you see the video of some yahoo felling a tree on a racer in Barry-Roubaix? NONE of the racers stopped to 1) check on the guy hit by the tree and 2) beat the living schitt out of the guy who dropped the tree.
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Wow.. the comments in that thread about the town are pretty eye opening. Makes Steamboat Springs look like a fairy land.
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A good lawyer will say he was tossing the water bottle to a friend and didn’t know the rider was there. Then blame the promoters for not having barriers.
But we all know what he (likely) did. People do insane things… like in the 2000 Olympics Athens when a crazy spectator tackled the leader in the Olympic marathon essentially robbing him of a gold medal. Crazy stuff.
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