Plenty of other influencers have managed it just fine. There is already enough inherent risk with racing that we don’t need someone adding to it, especially as it’s a pattern of behaviour.
Having your own media car allegedly driving into incoming traffic just to film you is not a mistake, it’s a choice of putting your own content creation above the safety of your fellow riders.
Do you think the driver purposefully drove into the oncoming creating a dangerous situation in the name of content creation, or do you think it could have been an accident? Seems like a lot of assumptions here. I see all sorts of people make dangerous errors in rides and races.
Personally, I think VC makes the best gravel racing videos in the industry. He has great cinematic skills, great narrations, and his constant self deprecating humor is awesome. His rock cobbler video is one of the best of the best. He is very hard on himself and experiences the same struggles as your average joe, while putting in a ton of effort to his training and racing. I’ve watched 200-300 gravel ride/racing videos and if I had to pick a top 20, his would easily be 15+ of them.
Imo if anyone manages to accidentally drive into oncoming traffic they shouldn’t be driving.
But I completely agree that his content is excellent, he definitely makes very high quality, well narrated story pieces around races/adventures that not many others do nearly as well.
I just don’t think that justifies putting people in danger.
I am going to remain skeptical this actually happened until we have more substantive evidence than a single commenter on an Instagram post.
I don’t disagree with that, but I seriously doubt VC was the one driving, given the bike riding thing. Without having any idea of how his “crew” is assembled, trained, etc., I’m not so sure throwing him to the wolves for an incident that was likely 100% out of his control is a bit much. Also there’s the whole “where’s the actual evidence of this at” thing - people rage bait all the time against those “influencers” they don’t like.
If it’s your media team it is ultimately your responsibility.
Hence why I put “allegedly” in my comment about it.
Wow… annoying criticism?
I was there, I saw their car doing some really stupid and dangerous moves, swerving into the shoulder in the opposite direction to avoid oncoming traffic, to get videos of the vegan idiot…
I can tell you I couldn’t care less about the ‘content’ this individual makes, not does the person who posted the note… a gold watch? get a life.
What? If he hired the crew, it is 100% his responsibility.
Agreed. His responsibility. But good luck hiring a crew for a bike race and completely eliminating the human error of others. The only thing he seems to have hurt in any and all of this was some random people’s feelings on the Internet.
So dangerous behavior isn’t really dangerous until someone gets hurt or killed?
Gotcha.
Take this with a grain of salt because I could have misinterpreted him, but I believe he said yesterday during his live stream that the car was the race promoters or the club’s. They were indeed getting footage for him but it was a neutral car that the footage was being recorded from. I believe he was subsequently dq’ed.
Again, I was only halfheartedly listening while I did an indoor century yesterday but this was my takeaway.
Doesn’t excuse it but it adds some important context if this was indeed what happened.
Ben Delaney got chastised on film for doing the same thing at either a group ride or event.
I think chastised is the correct word to use because it generally means a reprimand lacking authoritative ruling. Ie you don’t get chastised into jail you get arrested and legally compelled. You don’t get chastised off the podium, you get ruled a DQ.
Did he cause a crash ? and yes, the sport of cycling has big problems with events shutting down everywhere because of lack of participation, real development level races cannot afford to implement drug testing because it costs their whole purse for the event to do, and content creators whether you like it or not prop these events up. It’s important to widen your focus outside of California and the surrounding region because it appears to me that this is like a bubble of absolute abundance and it’s easy to believe that every region has like 100+ good races per season. In canada it’s probably more like 5 for the whole of the country, including masters nationals.
I don’t consider doping to be cheating in the context of 1991 onwards because this is in wake of the festina affair, everyone is doing it, etc. For me I think it’s because of the understanding that Lance still had to do all of those insane rides with his quads and face the pain of pushing 7w/kg for 30 minutes (or whatever) to be honest it’s probably a level of pain tolerance and determination that earned him respect. Especially of the guys who were out there on the road with him, none of his rivals ever had a bad word to say because lance was a boss. The uninitiated simply don’t respect him because they cannot understand what it actually takes or took to move that US postal team into europe and compete in the 90s in a sport where the europeans were dominant. There was no VC vlogs for him to watch of these races these guys had to carve out everything for themselves. There is a reason Lance was so popular, he was brave and intrepid and never ratted on anybody regarding the substances which was also important because it allowed the sport of cycling to grow in the USA (where I assume many are based) perhaps our californian friends wouldn’t live in a world with such an abundance of gravel races if Lance didn’t quietly shoulder the burden of the whole dirty sport (and to be honest all sports, look at soccer, track and field, etc. In 2000 Arsenal won a golden EPL trophy never losing a match… what a coincidence. People who know the sport and specifically what it takes to race in men’s elite never bash on lance, we all know he was just a jockey for a massive institutional investment into american road cycling, what did people expect him to do pull the plug on everything? We would still be riding downtube shifters if that were the case…
That is a topic that is often discussed in the broad realm of virtue ethics, generally amongst bike racers the outcome has almost always been where the measurements are made. IE a rider attacks and wins, it was a good attack. They attack and get caught, it was foolish, They shoot the inside on a corner and make it, it was a genius move, they shoot the corner and don’t make it, they were a total cowboy.
So yeah when it comes to filming a race or driving a neutral car obviously there is a need to put the right kind of driver behind the wheel, but if we got people saying that pulling over onto the shoulder to allow traffic to pass is dangerous, like I said above people will complain about anything.
Well that is just factually incorrect.
As for everything else you posted, I’ll say we have different moral compasses and leave it at that.
lol
Since when does he need to cause a crash before his behaviour is dangerous?
We have already answered that….we “need’ the content of these vitally important influencers, so we must therefore accept the associated risks included with their behaviors.
The onus is on US to avoid the dangers, not on them. 
It’s not my original idea but the point has been raised that cheating is breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage, which in the case of systemic doping across the whole peloton means an even playing field and thus no advantage. Remember none of his victories were reassigned to anyone because it was not possible.
Lance is unlikely to have been the first rider to use PEDs and turnabout is fair play.
Your rationalization breaks down when you understand that not all riders in the peloton during the 90’s and 00’s were doping.
Doesn’t matter if it was 1 or 1000 who didn’t dope.
I don’t accept “they were all doing it” as rationalization for my daughter’s mistakes so I’m certainly not gonna accept it from a multi-millionaire bully.
YMMV.
Right not to get personal here but if my fictional daughter was the only one not to get into college because she didnt cheat on the final while the other 999 did… well you can see that the definition of cheating breaks down when it doesn’t confer an advantage as I said.
As for riders in the pro peloton and doping, I happen to have a very close friend who told me that it became impossible to do TDF without doping by 1992. This is coming from a man who rode multiple grand tours in the late 80s. But even if they weren’t all doping, everyone in the GC for sure was to various extents. Lance is mostly know in the professional world for his affiliations with the doctors who perfected it, there have been guys taking low octane products with mixed results for decades.
Anyways I just don’t like people bashing on lance like as if we can hold him to the same standards as a human being, that goes completely out the window when you are a public figure on his level and doubly so when you are an animal who’s only skill is ride bicycle.
I’m not an advocate for Lance’s behavior or for doping, but I’m also not dumb enough to not take benefit from the insane rides he did. He is one of the most inspirational chracters of all time with a character arc that would make shakespeare blush. Nothing to do with moral compasses more to do with perspective.
So we should hold public figures to lower standards?
Regardless most people don’t hate lance purely for doping, they hate him for being a horrible human being and treating those that rightfully called him out for doping in a deplorable manner.