Great point about the journalistic component here. Have not seen a single other article that has not gotten the point of view of other riders on other teams that saw the whole thing go down on course or even at the fight. Some of this is sloppy/lazy journalistic integrity (lack of) because VN and all the others just report these days on what was tweeted/insta’d and don’t bother to make a call to some of the other riders that were behind the two.
There were so many gopros on bikes there has got to be a better view.
But IMHO the fight comes down to who threw the first punch. Hernandez was calling out bad riding on the L39ions part and there is no other way, post race, other than to be a little confrontational, just the nature of timing/adrenaline/fatigue right after a race. Could have just been a heated discussion and not a brawl with a top US team and Top US rider.
I totally agree. And I am absolutely not lionizing (see what I did there!) L39gion. There is guilt to be thrown their way here, and that is why I feel the PR is so tone deaf and, frankly, off putting.
I want to see legion succeed domestically, but more importantly I want to see them thrive and be a torch bearer for future gens. This incident surely hurts that cause.
At the risk of sounding like a pacifist, I don’t think its right to equate yelling at someone as contributing to a physical fight.
Look at domestic disputes. Probably 99% (and the other 1% are lying) of married couples have gotten in a shouting match.
What immediately changes things are when blows are thrown. This is what the serious offense is, in my opinion. There is no need to get physical and that lack of restraint should be punished.
I hope that wasn’t directed at my comment, because I couldn’t agree more.
as an aside: I also sent @cyclingtips an email begging them to do some reporting on this, because I think they are one of the few outlets that have the relative independence and ability to cover this well.
Not at all… did it notify you that I replied to you specifically? It wasn’t my intent if so.
My comment was in general to those saying Hernandez has some blame because he shouldn’t have confronted Williams. If there is a rule that Hernandez broke by causing drama in parc ferme (or whatever its called in cycling) by yelling, then sure punish him appropriately. But again, to those equating the actions, I disagree.
Sorry, just getting caught up in the thread.
Yeah I have yelled at plenty of people post-race about shenanigans they pulled. Sometimes its totally a misunderstanding about what happened, sometimes they are just jerks, sometimes it was my fault and didn’t even realize it, but this is a pretty normal part of crit racing imo. Fisticuffs though? Definitely not and not ok. The two are not even close to equivalent in our sport, imho.
I don’t see any contact. To me it looks like he is just standing back and yelling. His teammate is between him and Cory but I don’t see any contact between Hernandez and Cory and especially none with Justin.
I bet there’s plenty someone could say that are as bad, or worse, than the first punch. Racism or otherwise.
I have no idea, I’m just saying there’s so many unknowns that it’s not really fair to say anyone is less to blame than the other. I think Hernandez caused the incident on the track personally, and that it’s anti-Yankeeism / tall poppy syndrome, but none of them have represented themselves well at all here.
I think if this occurs before the social media age, it gets reported as a minor scuffle and everyone moves on. It’s not a great look for anyone involved but the (literal) and (figurative) temperatures were running hot.
I am sure they all woke up the next day and wished it had played out differently.
There may be a bit of piling on as it’s Legion involved but as the leading team driving the resurgence on crits, their PR response needed to be better and above the fray.
Sagan didn’t put Cav into the barriers, Cav tried to ride through a window that wasn’t there. There was an investigation that cleared Sagan of all of this after he was erroneously thrown out of Le Tour.
Legion - IG clips and stores all about bumping, aggressive riding, “rubbing is racing”, etc. etc.
Also Legion - Complaining about aggressive riding and bumping from Marcotte, and McCabe, literally after having IG videos about bumping and rubbing.
Also Legion - It’s the same 2 that are always in the confrontations. Granted, it’s their team so it makes sense, but you don’t see people like Lance Haidet or Sam Boardman getting into beef’s with people. Those two are a class act.
not to mention Sagan didn’t get more popular after this. Sagan popularity has been pretty high since his 7 green jerseys. All but 2 happened before this. The headline of this crash was literally “Cycling’s most popular rider, Peter Sagan, kicked off race after crash.” His Instagram following may have increased, but who’s hasn’t since 2017. I’d argue his popularity or at least respect for his ability has waned dramatically since this.
This made me laugh 
I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there, but I do have a corollary thought:
If you’re gonna confront someone while wearing bike shoes with road cleats, you better make sure the other person is wearing them too, or it’s going to end badly for you lol
I’ve been mad enough to consider confronting someone (a driver, in my case) and then the thought of marching up to him in spandex with cleats on cooled me right off 
I agree with everything you said here. At the same time, the other rider involved here flat out lied to the press when he claimed (incorrectly) that he thought Cory pedal struck in the corner and then purposefully drove him into the gutter. He specifically said there was no contact when the video shows there clearly was contact initiated by Hernandez that actually caused the whole ordeal.
So you can quote Legion’s press release and say it’s a bad look, and I’d probably agree with that… but at least they’re not out there outright lying about what actually happened.
The exact quote from VeloNews:
“We didn’t touch or anything,” Hernandez said. “He clipped his pedal because he was trying to sprint into me, and then out of the corner, he rode next to me and tried to take me straight into the curb. I would have crashed if I didn’t back off.”
Now, “crit brain” is a thing, so maybe he didn’t realize what actually happened, and maybe he’ll retract this when he sees the video. Just trying to give some benefit of the doubt here.
Can you post that video? I’ve only seen the shot from the back and other riders obstruct the view of the actual contact.
I posted the link to it here (post #54). The contact isn’t obstructed. You can see Hernandez put his elbow into Cory. Cory claims he also got hooked, but that you can’t really determine from any video I’ve yet seen, so the extent of the contact is obscured, but you can definitely see there is substantial contact between Hernandez’s right elbow and Cory’s midsection.
Yeah, i did look at that video before and to me it looks like Cory was expecting more contact and thats what makes him lose control. Maybe its just the slo-mo screwing up my perspective, but it looks like an elbow flick, not an aggressive collision. But I’d like a different angle because I could totally be wrong about it
I don’t think we can overlook racism as another factor that Legion gets so much hate. The cycling community is certainly not immune from white supremacy culture.
Yep.
And that’s why it’s probably always best to keep your cool until you actually KNOW WTF happened, which Hernandez pretty clearly did not here.
My last race ended in a crash that ended my season. Three of us went down. A rider on the inside took a gutter line, hit some loose dirt and lost his front wheel. He took out the rider next to him. I went down as collateral damage… I thought I went over the rider who was taken out, and originally thought that rider had crossed wheels with the guy in front of him… I was pissed because I knew I was injured and probably done for the season. I was upset because I hadn’t done anything “wrong” but paid for it anyway.
The other guy who got taken out was pissed AT ME because he thought that I took HIM out from behind (which is weird). We both sat there on the side of the road, being tended to, unknowingly fuming at each other.
Turns out we were both incorrect. My front wheel got clipped when the rider in front of me braked and swerved to avoid the other rider who got taken out. It sent me over my bars and onto the road. I landed next to the other rider who got taken out.
Meanwhile, neither of us knew what actually caused the accident until about a day later when we got to see the video. Fortunately, we both kept our heads and didn’t actually say anything to each other other than, “Tough break, heal up soon, man, sorry this happened… etc…” even though we were both internally (and incorrectly) blaming each other for the crash.
Maybe if people would chill the F out and recognize that THEY TOO make mistakes sometimes, this stuff wouldn’t happen (Hernandez). You can say what you want about Legion’s tactics, but from what I’ve seen in this incident, it was caused by one guy, escalated by one guy initially, and then Justin Williams unfortunately lost his head too and inexcusably threw a punch.
But Hernandez is in the wrong here in the race, and again for aggressively approaching someone to blame them for something that didn’t even happen the way he thought it did in the first place.
The right way to handle this is to just let it go. If you think something unsafe happened, report it to the officials. Handling it yourself will almost never work out well for anyone, and you’ll probably feel worse in the long run, especially if you end up being wrong.
You said it. I wasn’t going there because that inevitably leads to random arguments, but I 100% agree with you in my opinion. (And this will be my only statement on that particular subject).
I’ve had this thought since Saturday when the whole issue blew up, but have kept quiet because that observation usually doesn’t lead anywhere productive. Things like “dirty Williams Brothers”, Legion being “aggressive” or having “attitude” are simply microagressions whether people realize it or not. Even above someone mentioned that there are “two” Legion riders always at the center of controversy, but the others are all “class acts”… although both Tyler Williams and Ty Magner were at the center of the whole payment feud reaction looking like pretty big jerks. It’s subtle, but definitely doesn’t go unnoticed.