Close Encounters of the Unpleasant Kind
All you want to do is get an escape group and pick up a few mountain points, and what happens? Not...
All you want to do is get an escape group and pick up a few mountain points, and what happens? Not what you expect - at least that's the way it worked out for Fabian Wegmann Wednesday. "I had finally managed to pick up a 15 to 20 second lead with some other riders when suddenly there are Basque protesters in the street. I thought I wasn't seeing right. They held me fast, literally, there was no way to get through. Unbelievable! And the police didn't do anything. Suddenly the field was there and flew right by. That doesn't particularly help your morale," writes the Gerolsteiner rider on his homepage, www.fabianwegmann.de.
Jens Voigt's encounter was on Tuesday, and fortunately didn't end up as bad as it could have been. As he describes it on www.sport1.de, "In the middle of the stage, a wave went through the field. Everybody moved with it, like a swarm of fish. I was all the way on the outside and was happy, that nothing happened. But then it went BANG and I made a big jump forwards! When I turned around to look, I saw that a photographer's motorcycle had rammed me. They hadn't paid attention! Fortunately, I didn't crash. But the best part was, they just drove on past me without a word and didn't even excuse themselves. I notice who it was, but when I got to the finish line, the driver was no longer there."
He tracked the driver down on Wednesday, though. "I found the motorcycle driver before the start today! I told him, 'Hey, buddy, you drove into me yesterday! You could at least have excused yourself or made some kind of gesture.' He answered, 'yeah, you're right.'"
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