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  • Yates should be gutted-freak incidents are part and parcel imhop and
    there's been many other occasions where the disadvantaged party has
    been left to suck it or simply been injured and unable to continue.
    Hoogerland anyone? Ted King? You either play the magnanimous
    arbitrator for all people or none at all...

    The problem is the organisers are more magnanimous towards some riders than others because all riders are equal but some (the higher profile riders, and the riders who are winning) are more equal than others.

    See this tweet from Tom Dumoulin:
    https://twitter.com/tom_dumoulin/status/753664299449643008

    (He later tweeted "Easy to joke about it in my position of course. But what was going on there in the last kilometers?? Should never have happened!", but your call on whether he meant the original tweet or not).

    Thing is though, this isn't simple favouritism. After the Gerrans/Stannard crash the peloton could have chosen to leave Froome behind when he stopped for his felled teammates, but they didn't. Cancellara backed him up, Valverde was persuaded (apparently he wanted to press on) but a truce was called.

    The question is, where do you stop? How bad does a pitfall affecting the yellow jersey have to be? It's a grey area. Froome hadn't even crashed when Stannard and Gerrans went down with 33km to go, so why did they wait?

  • Gerrans went down with 33km to go, so why did they wait?

    There was at least one movistar riders also down. And they were 33km out. The peloton are less likely to moderate attacks the further into the stage you go.

    I also think 'wait' is the wrong term. They just delay pushin-on a bit.

    It's just not the same. In the Froome, Porte, Mollema incident the road was blocked - something the ASO should really never have let happen, so they feel an obligation I guess.

    Nobody could claim the same for the Gerrans wind thing.

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